Environmental Engineering Students were Attentive for a While

Every semester I teach a class to ENE 262, Introduction to Environmental Engineering. The students must work in teams to write a paper using peer review sources on a related topic. Some of the topics this term are:

• Carbon Footprints of Transportation Vehicles
• Nanoparticles in personal care products
• Sensors for water supply research
• State of the Art in landfilling

The professor had to be at a meeting in Trenton so he picked today for me to give the library lecture. I was afraid that the students would not be attentive and think that the class was not really necessary. I was pleasantly surprised for the first 50 minutes of the class, but toward the end I observed restlessness among the students. I picked a few of the topics and showed how they could be searched in Scopus and in the EPA database. My Powerpoint presentation may be found at http://library.njit.edu/docs/ENE262_Spring2009.ppt