Explore MCSI's past service initiatives with community members and local organizations using the tabs below.
The previous battery recycling program on the University of Pittsburgh's campus was limited and not accessible to individual members of the campus community. The work of Dr. Amy Landis initiated a highly visible, easily accessible, campus-wide battery recycling program that additionally raised awareness among community members about the impacts of electronic waste disposal. This was accomplished through the installment of educational posters and battery collection locations throughout campus.
The Ceramic Filter Project is a multidisciplinary group at the University of Pittsburgh that works with community organizations in the Pittsburgh area on the development and implementation of low-cost ceramic water filters through service learning experiences and research.
The activities of the Ceramic Filter Project are supervised and coordinated by Dr. Ian Nettleship in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science. Dr. Nettleship works with student organizations (Engineers Without Borders, Engineers for a Sustainable World, etc.) and other faculty to recruit students into the project and develop documented hands-on, service-based learning experiences for student participants. Dr. Nettleship also works with other faculty on curriculum development and research programs related to the activities of the Ceramic Filter Project.
Safe drinking water is essential to health, survival, growth, and development. Over 884 million people worldwide do not currently have access to clean drinking water. The World Health Organization states that millions of people die each year from diarrhea because they don't have access to clean water. Clay-based ceramic water filters are among a few technologies that are recognized to be promising and accessible by the World Health Organization because they have been shown to be very effective at removing bacteria from drinking water. It is also a sustainable approach, as all societies have functioning ceramics manufacturing industries that have traditionally supplied containers for household water storage.
Ian Nettleship heads a team of engineers studying the distribution of silver through ceramic water filters. The metal tends to flake off the surface of the filter, so Nettleship's team seeks a longer lasting solution. The tiny, nondescript domes dripping water into Home Depot buckets don't look like much in the name of saving lives or cutting edge research, but Nettleship points out that the filters remove contaminants from drinking water, with the potential to save thousands of lives.
His team collaborates with Potters for Peace, and a group of ceramic artists who have been developing the filters in a pottery studio in Braddock, PA, a former steel town adjacent to Pittsburgh. Nettleship and his students study how the metal needs to interact with the clay; Potters for Peace work on distributing the filters and disseminating information about their use.
In 2015, participants in MCSI's annual Undergraduate Summer Research Program worked with the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy to remove an invasive species, garlic mustard, from Frick Park in Squirrel Hill. View photos of the service event on Flickr.
The Kingsley Association, located in Larimer, endeavors to create comprehensive educational, recreational, and social programming that positively impacts the lives of youth, their families, and the East End community as a whole.
Dr. Melissa Bilec, in collaboration with Penn State University, the Penn State Center, and the Kingsley Association, completed a unique, service-based learning course where University of Pittsburgh students conducted energy assessments in the Larimer community. The course, led by MCSI's Dr. Bilec and titled Design for the Environment, served as a pilot site for PSU's National Energy Leadership Corps (NELC) project. NELC’s mission is to train and mobilize students to conduct free home energy assessments, with the goal of reducing home energy use while promoting parallel learning among students and homeowners. The semester culminated in a community symposium at the Kingsley Association where the students presented their final reports and individually discussed low-cost opportunities to save energy with the homeowners. With the assistance of Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh, the work continued that summer to implement the identified energy saving initiatives into qualifying homes.
In the summer of 2010, MCSI summer students helped to develop plans that would find new uses for vacant lands and generate opportunities for new jobs and a more viable economy.
In the spring of 2011, students from MCSI and Pitt's Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) chapter partnered with the Kingsley Association to teach six classes on practical sustainability topics as part of Kingley’s Junior Urban Leadership Institute (JULI) afterschool program. The topics covered were an overview of sustainability and community problems, food, energy, buildings, design for environment, and water and waste management. Each class was about two hours long, with a fluctuating set of 3-6 students. The goals of this program were to focus on practical sustainability solutions and to help design sustainability projects for future implementation in Larimer, such as lighting for basketball courts, solar-heated water from refrigerator coils, and mushroom caves created from shipping containers.
In 2011, a group of Pitt students led by Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) teamed up with the Mascaro Center, Pitt's Facilities Management, a non-profit organization called SEEDS, and Dr. Dan Bain of Pitt's Geology Department in order to bring a community rain garden to Pitt's Oakland campus. A site on the northwest corner of the Pete Lawn was chosen and approved for the project. The rain garden captures rain water and holds it in a shallow, pond-like garden structure until it can naturally infiltrate the soil—thus reducing the amount of run-off that floods both Pittsburgh's sewer system and the grass on the Pete Lawn.
Members of the project team, which consisted of active ESW and Free the Planet members, were responsible for all phases of the assessment, design, and construction of the rain garden. The project team was excited to not only deliver something beautiful and functional to the Pitt campus, but also to raise the awareness of sustainability in the Pitt community by posting explanatory signs at the rain garden site.
The Mascaro Center previously worked with the citizens of Vandergrift, located in Westmoreland County, PA (population: 5,200), to help them become more sustainable while also thriving economically. A group of local citizens, the Vandergrift Improvement Project, decided to try to grow the town using principles of sustainability modeled after the Swedish Natural Step program. The Mascaro Center is working to help them to achieve these goals.
Beginning in 2005 under the direction of Dr. Mary Besterfield-Sacre, teams of students worked to determine how to reduce the energy load of the historic Casino Theatre while maintaining its unique character. A second team, led by Dr. Lisa Weiland, examined how micro hydro technologies might enable the Vandergrift business district to lower its energy bills, helping to attract new businesses to town.
Results have shown that the Kiskiminetas River is a significant untapped natural energy resource for the town. There also was a knowledge gap, says Weiland, about how best to harness that resource. Weiland recognized that the situation presented a rare opportunity to close that gap by developing new sustainable-energy technology, which would likely have applications far beyond Vandergrift. So she organized a student team—known as the Hydrokinetic Energy Harvesting Team—to develop this new technology.
With Weiland’s guidance and seed funding from the Mascaro Center and the Heinz Endowments, the students worked with Vandergrift residents to harness the Kiski River’s energy in innovative ways while also reducing the town’s energy consumption.