Course Introduction to MIT 1.061 by Professor Nepf

INTERVIEWER: Hi. Can you tell us your name and what course you teach? NEPF: I am Heidi Nepf. And I teach the course 1.061 which is Environmental Transport Processes. INTERVIEWER: And what department is this in? NEPF: And that is in Civil and Environmental Engineering. INTERVIEWER: So can you tell me what the goals are for this class? NEPF: Well, the goals of the course are two-fold. Obviously, it is to expose the students to the environmental transport processes which include air, water exchange, advection, dispersion. But there is also a secondary purpose of the course to introduce the concept of scale analysis or, in particular time scale analysis which is a methodology by which you can compare processes using the unit of time. INTERVIEWER: OK. And why do you teach this particular class? NEPF: This is a core class for the environmental engineering degree, although I do every year get a handful of students of outside of what we call the 1E program. And it sets the groundwork for looking at fate and transport of chemical and biological components in the environment. So I teach the physical components, how things move around and how they move between different compartments, water and air. And then, in the second semester, students learn more about biological and chemical reactions. At the end of their junior year they have a field project which, largely to their own design, they choose something they want to go out and observe and study. And they have three weeks in which to design an experiment and go out and conduct it, hopefully drawing upon some or all of the things they have learned over the year. INTERVIEWER: OK. So what happens in a typical class day? Is it sort of a lecture type of setting? NEPF: I have a lecture class and a laboratory class that are actually linked. So twice a week we meet for lecture. It is an hour and a half, which is a long time to meet so I like to break up the class with what I call sort of brain teasers or little problem sets that the students will do in groups. So they are usually five to ten minutes in length. I will set up the problem, let them work it, and then I force them to give me the answer. I have learned not to give out the answer. Otherwise, they won't do the work. And then once a week we have a laboratory activity which ties into what has been learned in lecture but gives them a chance to really get hands-on. INTERVIEWER: So the students work in small groups sometimes in the lecture part of the class. Do they also do any projects in teams or in groups or is the rest of the homework really done on their own? NEPF: The homework they have the option to do either on their own or in teams. But sometimes they will work in teams if the homework is a little bit more of a project base. So some of the homework are things like estimate the residence time of your dormitory room or estimate the flow in the Charles River which is right nearby. And I just don't give them anymore information. And I let them work in groups to come up with how they are going to do that estimation. And then they have to write it in pros form. And I try to teach them a little bit about scientific writing, equation numbers, simple things like that. And, actually, I really enjoy that part because they come up with very creative solutions. INTERVIEWER: OK. Any other pedagogical methods or special things that you might do in class that might not be evident from the OCW materials? NEPF: No. It is mostly just the lecture and then the brain teasers in the class that I use. And I occasionally will bring in my laptop so that I can show the animations in class and talk about them so that when the students use them in their homework they are more familiar with them. INTERVIEWER: Can you say a bit more about the lab assignments, the laboratory work? NEPF: Yeah. The laboratory work mostly takes place in the Hydrodynamics Lab which is actually in this building. And they include things we do in experiment to measure air water exchange. We do an experiment that measures dissolution from Egyptian plate. We look at the turbulence. We have them measure velocity profiles actually using different kinds of technology, laser Doppler anemometry, acoustic Doppler anemometry and also like just a digital camera visualization. So they get a little exposure to measurement techniques in the lab. I am an experimentalist myself so, of course, I like to emphasize that part of the course. INTERVIEWER: And how do you assess the students, both in the lecture or in the laboratory? NEPF: The way assessment is done is that they have homework assignments, but that is a relatively small amount of the total grade. I like to give a quiz about every two weeks. I find that that fits in nicely because most of the other courses give major midterms and major finals. I actually find I get a better intellectual return. That they learn better if I give a mini-quiz, like a half a time quiz every two weeks. It forces them to keep up with the material a little bit more. And that is the major assessment. And then they have a final, a cumulative final. INTERVIEWER: And what do students go on to do? Are most of them doing this as part of their major? NEPF: Most of them are doing it as part of the Environmental Engineering major, but I also get a lot of students who are first year graduate students who are attracted to environmental engineering but are coming from backgrounds where they might not have been exposed to fluid mechanics before. And so this serves as a first year graduate course as well. INTERVIEWER: OK. Do you have any other comments or anything else you would like to share about the class? NEPF: No. I really enjoy teaching it. And I find that the more enthusiasm we bring to the class that the students respond really well to that and it makes the class overall really fun to teach. INTERVIEWER: OK. Well, thank you very much for sharing your course materials with MIT OpenCourseWare. We appreciate your input. NEPF: OK. Thank you.