Bridging the disciplines

Professor Rob Jamieson. (Danny Abriel Photo)

The Environment, Sustainability and Society program will prove to be a powerful combination with the university’s new undergraduate degree in Environmental Engineering, according to Prof. Rob Jamieson.

Environmental engineering provides students with an understanding of the capabilities, limitations and appropriate use of current environmental control technologies. This will be balanced with the new program’s broader focus on social issues such as globalization, entrepreneurship and demographics, among others.

Rob Jamieson’s personal academic path traces the development of his current field of environmental engineering. A biology major when he first started his undergraduate studies, Prof. Jamieson was most interested in environmental issues and engineering solutions.

In the early 1990s, Canadian universities began developing environmental engineering programs. Eventually, he switched into a similar program in biological engineering at Dalhousie that had an environmental engineering stream.

Prof. Jamieson’s academic trajectory parallels what he believes to be a vital component in the success of current environmental engineering programs: an integration of several disciplines, both scientific and socio-political.

“A major trend in environmental engineering, and the environmental management field in general, is the need for interdisciplinary collaboration,” he says. “Solutions to most of our major problems will require integration of technical, social, legal, and economic disciplines.”

Now an assistant professor of environmental engineering in Dalhousie’s degree program, which began in 2004, Prof. Jamieson describes his field as a fusion of science – ecology, biology and chemistry – and engineering principles.

“The focus is on the protection of the environment and human health,” he says.

More specifically, environmental engineers study how pollutants are generated and transported, their potential impacts on the environment, and how to design systems and strategies to mitigate these impacts.

Water quality management and how myriad pollutants move within land and water systems is the focus of Prof. Jamieson’s research. These studies are used to develop waste management strategies that will ultimately minimize pollutants to ensure healthy water resources and aquatic systems.

“We need to understand how our activities, be it forestry, agriculture or urbanization, influence water quality, and then see how we can reduce these impacts,” he says.

Since environmental engineering is a new and innovative field, practical problems requiring creative solutions arise constantly. Since the field is evolving, Dalhousie’s undergraduate and graduate students can acquire practical experience devising environmental management solutions for Nova Scotia and beyond. This term, a group of his undergraduates are designing water resource management solutions for local municipalities as part of their senior-year design project course.

As a burgeoning technological field, environmental engineering, in collaboration with other disciplines, can help answer some of the more pressing problems facing society.