Peter Bower, senior lecturer at Barnard College, developed a revolutionary computer-based teaching program known as Brownfield Action in collaboration with Columbia University’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning in 1999. The program educates college students about pollution and how it can affect our communities. A brownfield is a plot of land that may feature some amount of contamination due to previous development. Gas stations, dry cleaners, and factories are common brownfield sites. Chemicals found on these properties can seep into groundwater systems and contaminate local drinking water supplies. 

With a background in toxicity, Bower was attracted to teaching students about brownfields. In the computer simulation, students become detectives. They investigate the source of water contamination in the program’s virtual town. The simulation shows how pollution can impact an entire city and the importance of preventing this.  I recently sat down with Professor Bower and learned more about the Brownfield Action program:

How did you come up with the idea for Brownfield Action?

15 years ago, longer even, we had a teaching tool called the groundwater project. It was a 2D model and everything was on 3x5 cards. It was really limited in terms of what we could do, but we took the tool and we made students form consulting teams and investigate brownfields. It was always in the back of my mind that we could do more with this. Technology began to advance, I would see my kids playing these little puzzle programs on the computer and I thought, why can’t we do this?

The big thing was when I was mayor of Teaneck, New Jersey; I had been involved with the excavation of underground storage tanks at gas stations. I had real documents, real materials, and I converted them into a more usable form [for the simulation].

How many schools now use Brownfield Action? Do they all teach the program in the same way?

The simulation is now being used at 10 or 12 different colleges. We have our fifth or sixth Brownfield Action training session coming up. Teachers come in and get trained in how to use it. We now have some high school teachers that are interested.

One of the big time consuming things that we’ve been trying to do is to develop this simulation so that it can be used in many different ways. Maybe teachers only want to explore the people; maybe they only want to drill. We’ve had to make it flexible so that teachers can use it in any way they want.

Why are brownfields important?

Aside from most people don’t know what a brownfield is, there are so many productive pieces of property that aren’t being used because they are potentially contaminated in some way. There are a whole host of industries like dry cleaners and gas stations that are definitely brownfields, but anyplace with an underground storage tank is a brownfield—could be your home, or a school. Gas stations are notorious; the way storage tanks are put in the ground allows leakage.

As it turns out, most brownfields are in urban areas. These properties have great transportation, they have a work force next to them, there’s a city there. How do we get these properties moving? It’s an economic issue.

Is your program unique?

Nothing else exists; this is the only show in town, totally unique.

What do you hope students will gain from this experience?

The over arching theme is toxics in the environment and how they move. There are social, political, and economic consequences. What can we do about it? The simulation deals with a real life story line with contamination that affects people. Students are directly involved with it by doing a Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessment and spend time thinking about remediation and how it might be fixed. Of course the best thing might be to prevent it all together. Rather than the standard cookbook lab, here the class is much more ambiguous and realistic. You really don’t know the basic scientific things, you don’t the porosity and permeability and all these different things, you’ve been given this huge task to solve, it’s a real life problem. We’re hoping that as people interact with their partner, they gain some of the tools they need in the real world.