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Most of us think about air pollution as something that occurs at the ground level, but in a big city like Chicago, many people live and work in high-rise buildings. How pollution levels vary across different altitudes was the research question that prompted undergraduate student researcher Megan Wenner, a senior majoring in environmental science, to install outdoor air sensors on floors one, four, six, and nine of BVM Hall on the Lake Shore Campus, and on floor 14 of the Malibu Condominium building a few blocks away.
Wenner is a member of the most recent cohort of Loyola’s Community Air Research Experience (CARE), a project that engages students from underrepresented backgrounds in hands-on research at the intersection of atmospheric science and environmental justice.
In Wenner’s case, she and her research colleagues monitored data from the higher-altitude air sensors for one month and made live air-quality data available via a digital map. Wenner and her team hope the results — which showed that concentrations of a harmful type of particulate matter increase up to an altitude of about 14 meters and then decrease on higher floors — may help Chicagoans make decisions about how to reduce their exposure to polluted air.
Funded through a three-year National Science Foundation grant, and in collaboration with Colorado State University, CARE students receive a crash course in applied research. Two cohorts of eight students each learned about research design and methods, and career opportunities in geoscience, through seminars, field trips, and a four-week summer research intensive in which they installed air monitoring instruments and collected and analyzed data on particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) pollution.
PM2.5 pollution is made from the fine inhalable particles generated by combustion. Many people in the Midwest and Northeast first learned about PM2.5 in the summer of 2023, when Canada’s seemingly endless forest fires led to air quality warnings, but vehicles and factories emit most of the PM2.5 in the air. High levels are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, lung cancer, strokes, asthma, and other significant health problems.
Empowering students to research questions relevant to the community has always been central to teaching science for Ping Jing, an associate professor in Loyola’s School of Environmental Sustainability. Jing designed CARE in that spirit, and with a focus on recruiting students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in environmental sciences.
That goal resonated with SES Assistant Professor Tania Schusler’s environmental justice research, which focuses on communities that bear the highest pollution burden, and she joined CARE as co-lead investigator. Throughout the program’s history, CARE has remained committed to recruiting students of color, with the goal of bringing greater diversity, equity and inclusion to geoscience careers.
“Many students of color have a strong interest in the environmental field, but don’t feel a sense of belonging working in it,” Schusler says. In assembling the 2023 cohort, the faculty noticed the program was also attracting students who identified as LGBTQ+. “That broadened our perspective on who is underrepresented in the field and became reflected in the 2023 cohort.”
Following a spring orientation and a summer of data collection and analysis, the second CARE cohort spent the fall finalizing their results and presented them at the Louis Stokes Midwest Regional Center of Excellence Conference “Inclusion by Design: Nurturing Diversity in STEM” in November 2023. Students Megan Wenner and junior Anna Ries-Roncalli, also majoring in environmental science, recently co-authored a paper with Jing and mathematics and statistics Assistant Professor Mena Whalen about the altitude research, which was accepted for publication in the scientific journal Sensors. Wenner welcomed the opportunity.
“The opportunity to be first author on a publication was not something I would have imagined was an option as an undergrad,” says Wenner. “It was very cool to see that come to fruition.”
CARE students also collaborated with community partners Edgewater Environmental Coalition and Southeast Environmental Task Force to share their research results and raise awareness about the risks of PM2.5. They soon learned that effective science communication — translating technical results into approachable language and a format that is easy to distribute — requires a different set of skills than field work. Senior Thomas Crabtree, who is majoring in environmental policy, embraced the challenge and worked with the cohort to develop social media graphics, flyers and other materials to explain how individuals can protect themselves from PM2.5.
“It was really important to have relationships with community partners so it was not an extractive process, [where we were only] taking data, but rather that we were building mutual relationships where you both benefit. It wouldn’t have been respectful to just dump our results on them. We thought a lot about alternative ways to present our findings so that community members and parents could access the information,” Crabtree says.
Now that the program is in its third year, CARE faculty are reflecting on its successes and challenges, and hoping to spread the word about how to facilitate undergraduate research opportunities that benefit students and communities.
“The CARE model is one that could apply to many environmental issues, like water quality and food access, so I hope that through the publications we’re working on and presentations by Dr. Jing at other research meetings, we can inspire faculty elsewhere to help students engage with this type of experience in other contexts,” Schusler says.
Schusler also says that while she expected CARE students to learn practical research and science communication skills from the technical training, she had not anticipated the role social activities like bike rides on the lakefront and pizza parties would play in making the student researchers into true colleagues.
“Dr. Jing understood how important it was to be intentional about giving the students the chance to build relationships with each other. Now that I observe their interactions and friendships, and see them exchange information and resources, it’s evident that sense of connection and community is strong and will continue.”
For now, the work goes on. The air-quality questions CARE students explored in their research have already spurred a 2024 service-learning project in which students used portable, palm-sized monitors to collect nearly 400 hours of data on indoor and outdoor air quality across their communities and reported their results in brochures and videos. And students from the 2022 and 2023 cohorts have moved on to other undergraduate research experiences. Wenner was selected for a research program focused on wetland ecology and restoration in Michigan. Crabtree is now an intern with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and says that participating in CARE opened his eyes to a broader range of career opportunities available to scientists, including in public policy.
“CARE was a really empowering experience,” Crabtree says. “I didn’t realize how important the mentorship was until I found myself with this amazing team of faculty, and the professional development and career advice, really pushing us to find what it is that we enjoy in the research and what paths we might take to continue that work.”
Read more stories from the School of Environmental Sustainability.
