Mechanical Engineering faculty Michael Hannigan, Daniel Knight and Shelly Miller have been selected to receive 2018-19 Outreach Awards that will allow them to fund outreach and engagement projects that reflect public need. Across all University of Colorado Boulder colleges and schools, this year’s Outreach Awards will provide a total of $460,000 in funding, impacting 19,500 Coloradans through education and community-based initiatives. Since 1999, more than 740 projects have received nearly $5 million.
Empowering Neighboring Communities to Mitigate I-70 Construction Impacts with Professor Shelly Miller
Miller is working with Professor Shivakant Mishra of the Department of Computer Science to empower neighboring communities to mitigate I-70 construction impacts. Central 70 (C70) is a project designed to widen a 10-mile stretch of I-70 through northeast Denver that will likely result in negative effects on community health, well-being and environmental health. In jeopardy is the Elyria-Swansea community, home to 7,218 residents, many of whom live below the poverty line and have below a high school education. The goal of this project is first to understand the impact of C70 on an environmental justice community using participatory research methods and community science data collection for three categories: impact on social relations, impact on wellbeing, and impact on the environment. Data will then be used to investigate how physical measurements correspond to community well-being and connection. The project will also design and demonstrate new socio-technical tools for collecting and analyzing data and for communication and mitigation of impacts. Socio-technical systems will be developed in collaboration with the community that is directly affected, engaging stakeholders as partners in design.
Air Quality Inquiry Projects in Rural Schools with professors Michael Hannigan and Daniel Knight
Hannigan and Knight are working with Joseph Polman, Associate Dean of the School of Education on outreach in the area of air quality and environmental engineering in underserved rural K-12 schools in Colorado. Their Air Quality Inquiry project (AQIQ) is in its third year of integration into environmental science courses at five schools, adding Greeley West this current school year. Previous assessment results indicate that of underserved populations in engineering, 61% of participants are female, 33% are Hispanic and 41% are first-generation in their families to attend college. This project aims to develop educationally impactful student-driven air quality research projects that integrate CU Boulder faculty and students. The goals of this project are to prepare air quality tools to provide for K-12 classrooms, to prepare CU student mentors to support high school teachers and students in implementing air quality research projects and curriculum, and to foster a relationship between the College of Engineering and the Applied Science and the School of Education to research learning experiences of participants to evaluate the program.