About Us
"Learning Through Environmental Health Science Scenarios" (The Hydroville Curriculum Project) was a 7-year grant funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). It was awarded to the Environmental Health Sciences Center at Oregon State University from 2000-2007. Although the grant has ended, we continue to help teachers incorporate the curricula into their classrooms.
Principle Investigator: Nancy Kerkvliet, EHS Center Investigator
Project Director: Molly Bloomfield
Training is available on request. Please contact Molly Bloomfield at molly.bloomfield@oregonstate.edu or 541-737-8892.
View and print a 2-sided brochure of Hydroville - inside, outside
Watch a short video about Hydroville
Project Description
The Hydroville Curriculum Project was developed to improve high school students' academic performance and stimulate interest in problem-solving, environmental health science, decision making, teamwork, and social responsibility. The curricula use environmental health topics to enhance connections between science, language arts, math, social studies, health, and technology.
The Hydroville Curricula offer three different scenarios that focus on real-world environmental health issues: (1) a pesticide spill; (2) an indoor air quality problem; and (3) a water quality problem.
These activities were developed by scientists and master teachers in science, engineering, mathematics, language arts, and social studies, and are aligned with National Education Standards.
These curricula represent a departure from the traditional high school science curricula because they are
- Interdisciplinary: Curricula integrate life and physical sciences and incorporate concepts in mathematics, language arts, social studies, health, and technology.
- Based on inquiry: Each curriculum was developed using a problem-solving framework designed to guide teachers and students through an investigation reflecting how scientists and experts solve real-world problems.
- Open-ended: Students learn that solutions are often tempered by stakeholder values and monetary considerations, and there can be multiple solutions.
- Research-based: Activities incorporate scientific technology, techniques, and instruments currently used in today's research laboratories.
Curriculum Contents
- Introduction: A 10-minute video introduces the problem, stakeholders and community history.
- Background Activities: Hands-on activities that provide concepts and skills needed to solve the problem.
- Expert Areas: Opportunities for students to role play as professionals such as soil scientists, toxicologists, engineers, chemists, industrial hygienists, and occupational physicians.
- Team Meetings: Scheduled time for student teams to develop teamwork skills and to analyze and synthesize data and develop hypotheses. Teams decide if a problem exists, discover the causes of the problem, identify environmental hazards, brainstorm solutions and present recommended actions.
- Solution Presentations: Student teams make formal presentations of their remediation plan to audiences representing the stakeholders in the Hydroville problem.
Team Teaching
Ideally, these curricula should be taught collaboratively by a team of teachers in math, science, social studies, and language arts. Due to scheduling and the structure of most schools, the science teacher most often takes responsibility for the instruction within her/his science course. This science teacher can use the HCP curriculum independently or with the support of one or more teachers in the other disciplines.
Helping Teachers Achieve New Heights
Two teachers using the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Curriculum received national recognition by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2005 for their outstanding teaching and mentoring achievements.
- Kaye Martin and her collegues integrated the IAQ Curriculum at the Springfield Young Parent Program. At the completion of the curriculum, the students presented their findings to the actual School Board of Springfield Public Schools.
- Debbie Cooper of the Beaverton School District applied the IAQ Curriculum to research projects with her students in the Science Research Club. They examined the relationship between student performance and classroom temperature and presented this at regional and state project competitions.
