Fourteen groundbreaking faculty members will be the first IUP
faculty to establish teamwork-intensive sections of courses for incorporation
into planned academic minor in Effective Teamwork and
Communication. The courses below build on new and existing
interdepartmental collaborations and integrate research with teaching. We
welcome them all to the grant team.
Congratulation to the first round of faculty mini-grant award winners.
1. Collaborative
Management of Human Metabolic Syndrome
Students enrolled
in BIOL 240 (Human Physiology) will collaboratively analyze and explore health and
treatment scenarios for human subjects afflicted to varying degrees by
metabolic syndrome, a complex and debilitating suite of physical traits that are
significant risk factors for several of the primary causes of human mortality
and morbidity, including heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. Because metabolic
syndrome impacts many different physiological systems (including
cardiovascular, endocrine, renal, and nutritive), the best approaches are
holistic and may include behavioral, pharmaceutical, and nutritive components.
Each student team will be asked to evaluate this disease (and its impact on
their subjects) from their own background/expertise. Student teams will also
develop a physiological profile for each of these subjects, as well as a health
maintenance/improvement plan.
2. Creation and
Simulation of Original Scenarios of Food and Nutrition Diseases
Students from
FDNT 355 Medical Nutrition Therapy I and THTR 281 Special Topics: Applied
Theater I will collaborate to create an original scenario based on a specified
Food and Nutrition specified disease. Students from FDNT 355 will apply their
knowledge of the disease and the circumstances related to this interaction in
collaboration with THTR 281 students applying their knowledge of scenario
development including character, plot, dialogue, given circumstances, and
simulated patient training. Students will conduct and share research, engage in
writing contextual content, and enact physical interpersonal role-playing to
develop a final scenario which cannot be completed without development from
students in each discipline. The final scenario will be presented at a
simulation event involving all students from both classes. During this
simulation, each interdisciplinary group will perform their final scenario.
This will be followed by a Forum Theatre simulation, which involves the larger
audience participating and interacting in the scenarios created by other groups,
thereby adapting the scenarios within a real-world context using improvisation.
The simulation ends with a large group debrief which focuses on the processes
used in creating the scenarios, the performance of the final scenario, and the
adaption of scenarios using Forum Theatre.
3. Drug Discovery:
Assessing the Pharmacological and Behavioral Characteristics of Serotonergic
Compounds
Pharmacology
students will be divided into Pharmacology Sub-Teams. Collectively, these sub-teams will determine
the pharmacokinetics (PK) and Pharmacokinetics (PD) of serotonin (5-HT),
several specific agonists or antagonists at various 5-HT receptors, and novel
serotonergic analogues obtained from Justin Fair’s research team in the
Chemistry Department. Each PST will
characterize a single compound. Each PST
will produce a scientific report which they will present to the sub-team in the
Physiological Psychology course that is examining the behavioral effects of the
same compound. Each PST will also
present their report to their classmates. At the course level, comparisons between the findings obtained with the
known compounds and the novel compounds will then be used to further
characterize the pharmacology of the unknown compounds. This larger report will be provided to the students
in the Physiological Psychology course.
Physiological
Psychology students will be divided into Behavioral Testing Sub-Teams. Each BTST will test one of the
compounds examined by the PST for behavioral effects in crayfish. As members of the BTST, Physiological
Psychology students will first develop in-depth knowledge about the serotonin
system, which is believed to play important roles in the regulation of mood,
appetite, and locomotion. Students will
then learn about crayfish and the behavioral effects of various serotonin agonists
and antagonists in this species. Using
this knowledge, students will then design a study protocol to assess the
behavioral effects of the various compounds in crayfish. Each BTST will then execute this protocol
using their assigned compound. Each BTST
will produce a scientific report which they will present to the sub-team in the
Pharmacology course that is examining the PK/PD of the same compound. Each BTST will also present their report to
their classmates. At the course level,
comparisons between the findings obtained with the known compounds and the
novel compounds will then be used to create a larger report integrating the
behavioral effects of the novel compounds with the psychology literature. This larger report will be provided to the students
in the Pharmacology course.
4. The Intersection
of Food Systems and Water Quality
Hao Tang (Chemistry) and Idamarie Laquatra (Food and
Nutrition): Awarded $2,000
Sustainable
Nutrition students will work with Environmental Chemistry students to carry out
water quality testing on samples gathered from streams, lakes, and possibly
public water systems and wells that may have water quality issues due to runoff
from farming, drainage, waste leakage, or lead pipes for example. The FDNT sub-teams
will focus on the food system impacted by the water quality, and the ENVE
students will develop the protocol for the appropriate testing. The project
will culminate with a written or oral presentation by the interdisciplinary
teams on the interrelationship of the food system with the environment,
detailing the water quality tests completed, the interpretation of the test
results, the source of the contamination, and the impact on the food supply.
5. Water Quality in
Southwestern Pennsylvania
Nathan McElroy (Chemistry) and Brian Okey (Geography
and Regional Planning): Awarded $3,500
CHEM 326 students
will work with GEOG 440 students to carry out a water quality study from a
local watershed area. The interdisciplinary teams will work together to design
and implement a water sampling study of a local watershed area (e.g., Blacklick
Watershed, Beaver Run Watershed). Teams will choose a study area, define a
sampling protocol and sampling schedule, and decide what chemical analyses will
be performed on water samples. A successful outcome of these studies will
depend on the students’ abilities to apply their own knowledge and experiences
in their disciplines, as well as effectively communicating this knowledge to
their teammates who do not have that expertise. Sub-teams will produce and
share results from field and lab measurements, and share their findings via an
oral presentation.
6. Wood: Seed to Art
This course will
be taught as a single, three-credit course using a studio/seminar format, meeting
once per week for four hours with an additional one-hour lecture per week. The
lecture component will be dedicated to providing the students instruction on
how plants grow, respond to their environment, and how this influences wood
formation. The bulk of the course will then put this into practice by allowing
the students to design and create objects in wood. The culminating class
project will be to create both the factual and educational information included
in the digital Allegheny Arboretum Kiosk to be installed in the Oak Grove, and
to design and fabricate a sculptural piece for the Art in the Arboretum project
that will accompany and compliment the kiosk. Each team will be assigned a
different aspect of the kiosk/sculpture project, with the biology students
providing the factual and education information to be included in the kiosk and
the art students providing the design and fabrication of the sculptural
component.
The course provides
students the opportunity to understand how wood is created through the growth
of trees, is supplied as a fabrication material, and is eventually turned into
a usable product (life-cycle analysis). Emphasis will be placed on how carbon
can be sequestered into a product and how the half-life of that product
compares to other forest products (construction materials, paper, etc.).
Analysis of what is “sustainable” and “renewable” will be a big part of the
class discussion, and students will gain hands-on experience in the milling of
campus and local logs into usable lumber (the Wood Center’s Harvest-to-Use
Program).
7. Linking Modern
Coastal Environments with Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction through Coastal
Geology and Archaeology
The student
teamwork project will be planning for, executing, and reporting on a coastal
survey to examine current and past environments along the Delaware
Coastline. The depositional environment
(beach, marsh, upland, etc.) determines how humans interact with the landscape
throughout time. Whether it is for the
determination of the location of housing, sustenance, or recreation,
understanding the processes altering the coastline environments plays a key
role. Students will work as
interdisciplinary teams to understand and quantify modern coastal processes and
environments and apply this to an understanding of both past and future spatial
relationships along the coast.