Small gifts lead to big impacts: Unique effort supports learning and spurs classroom innovation

Editor’s note: With Virginia Tech Giving Day 2022 beginning at noon, Feb. 23, a series of stories highlighting the impact of donations are featured on VTx this month.

To document their presence in Virginia, students studying wildlife field techniques in the College of Natural Resources and Environment place camera traps in remote forest areas around the Mountain Lake Biological Station and the Jefferson National Forest. To find those cameras — and find their way safely out of the woods — students utilize handheld GPS units.

“We don’t get great cell phone reception in a lot of the areas where we place camera traps,” explained Professor Marcella Kelly of the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. “The GPS units are critical in training our students how to navigate.”

In addition to helping students navigate wilderness landscapes to access 25 camera stations, the future conservationists use GPS units in radio telemetry labs to practice finding hidden radio collars like those used to locate animals. The units are also used by students working on individual and group class projects and by participants in the student chapter of The Wildlife Society.

The GPS units are one example of student resources funded through the college’s Faculty Instructional Grants, a unique program that incorporates donor support to provide some of the tools and technologies that enhance hands-on learning experiences across all departments.

“The CNRE Instructional Support Fund truly enhances student learning in the classroom and field,” said Associate Dean Keith Goyne. “Our creative faculty use monies from this program to implement innovative learning opportunities for their students that otherwise might be difficult to fund. After only three years of this program, thousands of students enrolled in over 35 courses have received educational benefits from this initiative.”

Imagining cities and printing in 3D

For a capstone project in the Department of Geography’s Sustainable Urbanization course, students had to rethink something big: New York City’s Central Park.

“If you were given the power to redesign Central Park to be the most sustainable, what would you do?” queried Associate Professor Robert Oliver. “That’s the question I ask my students, and they’re encouraged to experiment widely, so we can have a rich conversation. A couple years ago, I had a student who said that Central Park would be great with a monorail.”

To aid in this imaging, Oliver received funding to access Urban Footprint, a ready-to-use, comprehensive land-use software package that supports hands-on scenario planning and data visualization. The software lets students imagine alternative uses on an urban landscape and to contemplate questions of urban sustainability through a lens of city planning.

“Our courses draw students from a diversity of majors, and they all have different ways of thinking and different expectations for the course,” noted Oliver, who specializes in sustainable urbanization and smart cities. “One person might think in terms of built forms or physical ecology, while another is interested in social ecology or environmental impacts of real estate. I often say that my goal for this class is to have each student’s certainties crash into the certainties of others. This software allows that to occur.”

Oliver’s students have also used the software to imagine practical scenarios like how to improve transportation systems in Blacksburg and broad global challenges such as how sea level rise will impact cities like Charleston or Norfolk. He estimates that some 90 students across the university will use the software in any given semester.

“We are the largest educational user of Urban Footprint that I’m aware of,” he noted. “If it wasn’t for the funding provided by the instructional support fund, we wouldn’t have been able to trial the software to see if it would work for our students.”

While students in Geography are working to re-imagine urban spaces, their peers in the Department of Sustainable Biomaterials are using the emerging technologies of 3D printing to help tackle the challenges of the packaging industry.

“Our packaging and innovation lab aims to show our students the entire process of packaging in one space,” explained Instructor Eduardo Molina. “Integrating a 3D printer into our workflow allows them to experiment in developing packaging solutions. For instance, I had students this semester who proposed a handle that they wanted to incorporate in the packaging for a product, and they were able to create one using our printer and then test it quickly.”

Molina notes that 3D printers are becoming more common in the packaging industry.

“3D printing has become increasingly accessible, and that accessibility is permeating every industry that utilizes packaging,” he noted. “It’s become something that students need to know how to use and need to be comfortable with. With this printer, our students can learn how to create a prototype and test it and see if it works, so they can utilize it in their design processes.”

Counting hikers and bikers

On the new McDonald Hollow Trails, a small sensor is counting the hikers and mountain bikers that pass by. It provides critical land use data to students in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation’s Outdoor Recreation Planning and Management course, as well as giving the New River Land Trust and the Poverty Creek Trails Coalition a snapshot of how often the trails are being accessed. 

“Monitoring is a big deal in outdoor recreation, and if you’ve been following the news, you know that parks have been inundated with people this past year,” said Associate Professor Michael Sorice. “Being able to monitor a trail area over a broad period of time, where students can collect streams of data, is going to make for a much more robust teaching and learning experience.”

There are actually two sensors on the trail: one is an infrared beam that counts every person who passes. The other sensor, buried in the soil, counts the number of mountain bikes on the six trails specially designed for the sport.

“I’ve been coming out about once a month to collect the data,” explained Matthew Lindsay, a first-year master’s student in forest resources who is doing soil degradation research and visitor use surveys to supplement the data collected by sensors. “The data set is continual, so as long as the sensors are set up, we’re collecting.” 

For Sorice, who worked with the Blacksburg Parks and Recreation Office to install sensors, an important element to the work is giving students the chance to gain practical skills for future conservation careers.

“The practical aspect for this project is giving students the chance to have a tangible experience with the technology and methodological approaches,” he noted, “so they’re able to do this type of monitoring in the professional world.”

From helping students gather critical environmental impact information, to providing them with the software and hardware to take on global and industrial challenges, faculty instructional grants are already impacting students in the College of Natural Resources and Environment.

This crucial grant program is one of many ways in which donations from alumni and friends of the college can help today’s students and faculty. Philanthropy makes a difference every day, within the college, but the impact of collective generosity will be particularly evident during the university’s upcoming Giving Day, when donors interested in supporting future opportunities for hands-on learning will give online between 12 p.m. February 23 and noon February 24.

“Every gift given during Giving Day, regardless of size, helps the college provide positive learning, research, and teaching experiences for our students and faculty,” said Julia Allen, the college’s assistant dean for advancement. “The collective impact of the support provided by alumni and friends of the college is significant and greatly appreciated.”

Written by David Fleming