Environmental Science and Design Research Institute
List Girl
Last year, senior Kelsey Merritt attempted to break a Guinness World Record by assembling a team of volunteers to create the world’s largest mural painted entirely by bare feet—measuring 26,787 square feet—on the 91²Ö¿â Commons during Homecoming 2017. She’s still waiting to hear back from …
Economic Engine
Partners in Progress: (above) Kent City Manager Dave Ruller and 91²Ö¿â President Beverly Warren discuss the university’s new economic impact study during a press conference unveiling the report on February 26, 2018. “Sharing this data is creating a solid foundation for the future transformation …
Road Construction Leads to Wetlands Research On Campus
For anyone who has traveled to 91²Ö¿â over the summer, the Summit Street construction project has been quite an inconvenience for drivers. For Lauren Kinsman-Costello, though, it’s an opportunity to make the campus more ecologically friendly and establish trends in biology, chemistry, geology and ecology.
Up On The Roof
What some call a sustainable answer to urban flaws, Anna Droz calls research. As a biological sciences doctoral student in 91²Ö¿â’s College of Arts and Sciences, Droz’s curiosity has developed into a passion, maybe even an obsession, to discover the best vegetative roof combinations with the optimal plants, soil, and micro-organism communities.
Teaming Up To Tackle Toxic Waters
Like a financial analyst who pores over numbers to predict the next big trend, Joseph Ortiz, Professor of Geology at 91²Ö¿â, is an expert at crunching earth data.
Seeking Answers In the Arctic
Arctic permafrost typically functions as a vast freezer that preserves decaying plant matter for thousands of years, but rapidly warming climate is thawing permafrost and accelerating decomposition. Increased plant growth is needed to capture carbon that is released from decomposing organic matter, …
Waste to Value
Open water placement of dredged material in Lake Erie will be banned in the State of Ohio after July 1, 2020. However, eight federal navigation harbors built along Ohio’s Lake Erie coast still need to remove more than 1.5 million cubic yards of sediment.
What to do with this large amount of material removed from the ports in Ohio poses a major challenge. Securing the dredged material in a confined disposal facility (CDF) is costly. An alternative approach is to reuse the dredged material as a construction and landscaping material.
Biologist Partners With Toledo Colleague To Make Water Safer
The toxic algae bloom crisis in Toledo in 2014 put the issue of water treatment front and center, and problems like those in Flint, Michigan, and Sebring, Ohio have only added more weight to the discussion.Xiaozhen Mou, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, is working with colleagues at…
Turning Food Waste Into a Window of Opportunity
91²Ö¿â biology student rescues excess food for educational feast Imagine planning a dinner party for 500 of your closest friends and not knowing what you will serve until almost the last minute. It might sound stressful, but for Erin Shattuck it is a privilege. Ms. Shattuck is passionate a…