Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2009 - (Page 16)

By Jack Croft teaming up to tackle global challenges Bringing clean and safe drinking water to the town of Pueblo Nuevo, Honduras, wasn’t just an engineering problem. So a multidisciplinary team of Lehigh faculty, staff, and students—spanning diverse disciplines ranging from sociology and anthropology to civil and environmental engineering to international relations—has been working to address the related cultural, religious, and political considerations, language barriers, and need for community involvement. “The real focus of our research here is the issue of quality of life and standard of living for people,” says Anne Meltzer, the Herbert J. and Ann L. Siegel Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. This research is the reason Lehigh has embarked on the STEPS initiative, which includes construction of a 135,000-squarefoot facility, as well as creation of endowed chairs, endowed graduate fellowships for predoctoral students, and undergraduate research fellowships. The new buildThe new STEPS building is designed in an L-shape ing, located at the so students can still play Frisbee on Maginnes lawn. corner of Packer Avenue and Vine Street on Lehigh’s STEPS (Science, Technology, Asa Packer campus, will provide Environment, Policy, Society) prooffices for 80 faculty, staff, and vides the structure—academically graduate students, and will feature as well as physically—to bring 50 research and state-of-the-art together the expertise from such teaching labs, as well as 10 classdisparate disciplines as nanotechrooms, computer labs, seminar nology, bioscience, engineering, rooms, and a 75-seat auditorium. education, and political science “STEPS is much more than required to address the multifacjust a building,” says Dork eted problems arising in the age of Sahagian, professor of earth and globalization. As Lehigh’s effort in Honduras demonstrates, the university has a strong tradition of collaborating across disciplines to take on complex problems. And that serves as the foundation for Lehigh’s ambitious new $85 million STEPS initiative. 16 LEHIGH UMNIULLETIN AL B environmental sciences and director of the Environmental Initiative. “By bringing together diverse expertise, we can address emerging environmental problems.” At the official groundbreaking ceremony for the STEPS building in October, Lehigh President Alice P. Gast said the new initiative “will position the university as a leader in addressing critical societal issues, such as making solar energy economical and providing access to clean water to everyone. “Let me give you a sense of the magnitude of just one of these issues,” she said. “Experts estimate that one out of six people living on this planet does not have adequate access to water and that almost 5,000 children per day die as the result of waterborne illnesses. Five thousand children per day. This number would be greatly reduced if water for sanitation was available where they live. Think about the lasting impact on humanity if this problem could be resolved. I know that Lehigh has the ability to make that impact.” STEPS will draw faculty from disciplines across the university who conduct research in areas including climate change, aquatic ecosystems, nanotechnology, groundwater contamination, environmental literacy, and energyrelated topics, to name a few. “We need spaces and places that accommodate our ability to work together—to develop a sense of how the Earth works, what we can change and what we can’t, what’s important to people and what technology can do and what it can’t,” Meltzer says. “STEPS will bring people together with different expertise and experiences in order to form a common vocabulary and common meaning,” she adds. “We’re excited by the building, but we’re mostly excited by the interactions that will happen inside it.” The $62.1 million facility will reflect Lehigh’s commitment to environmental principles. It is designed to meet the certification criteria set by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building President Alice P. Gast addresses the crowd during the STEPS groundbreaking ceremony in October.

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Lehigh Bulletin - Winter 2009 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Teaming Up to Tackle Global Challenges Positively 4th Street A Sweet Job From the Publisher's Desk Alumni News

Alumni Bulletin - Winter 2009

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