Eliminating the Vicious Cycle of Uneducated Occupants
Amorette Getty, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara
Despite the university's primary role as an educational institution, the basics of laboratory operations are not considered as a topic of academic interest for science and engineering majors at the undergraduate or graduate level. As a result, young researchers enter laboratories with little to no context for understanding how their space works; any information they have is picked up ad hoc, or through the short, one-time safety course required by environmental health and safety departments. Long-term, a researcher's behavior in the laboratory can have a powerful effect on building resource and energy consumption, and the cultural nature of the laboratory environment soon multiplies this effect. As the subject was never presented to students as something important to know about, enacting changes to laboratory behaviors in the name of sustainability post facto becomes extra-challenging; researchers have been given no reason to believe that their behavior matters.
At University of California (UC), Santa Barbara, we are piloting a new program to provide basic framework knowledge of laboratory operations to all graduate and undergraduate science and engineering majors, emphasizing the role that they play in ensuring efficient building operation. In the first phase of this educational effort, we present a 30- to 90-minute lecture on laboratory building basics, offering the presentation to key junior and senior undergraduate laboratory classes in science and engineering majors, as well as to graduate-level laboratory classes and research groups on campus. Similar in length to the ubiquitous laboratory safety course, this lecture focuses on providing a working understanding of ventilation, water, electricity, laboratory utility, and waste systems required for the operation of laboratories, and is tailored to the types of laboratories their major will encounter, as well as provides specifics for their campus laboratory building whenever possible. As young researchers progress, some move on to become faculty themselves, charged with designing and specifying their own laboratories. Phase two of this effort will include a series of more in-depth lectures for senior graduate students and post-docs responsible for maintaining a multi-user laboratory space and potentially not far from starting their own laboratories. Information on the latest technologies for sustainable laboratories, as well as guest lecturers from experienced laboratory managers and facilities staff, will provide future faculty with the information they need to specify their own laboratories for the 21st century.
During this conference talk, the speaker will present the details of the educational effort described above, outlining lecture content, strategies for choosing talk venues, and successes and lessons learned from the project.
Biography:
Amorette Getty is the director of the Materials Research Facilities Network (MRFN) within the Materials Research Laboratories (MRL) at UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Getty's work focuses on improving research efficiency in a broad sense, connecting geographically disparate researchers with appropriate laboratory resources, ensuring the smooth operation of high-tech facilities, and connecting researcher behavior and laboratory equipment choices to building operations for a more sustainable research environment. Dr. Getty is a staff advisor for UC Santa Barbara's Laboratory Research and Technical Staff (LabRATS), a program that administers a wide range of campus-wide laboratory sustainability projects while providing educational opportunities to undergraduate interns. Dr. Getty received her Ph.D. in materials science at UC Santa Barbara. Dr. Getty's graduate research focused on improving the efficiency of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for solid state lighting and related applications.