Making a Difference
Environmental Engineering

Jerald Schnoor (engineering professor): I always thought that I'd love to teach, and I'll never give up that part. I'm interested especially in the environment, and more particularly on the water and soil side, so I teach a groundwater quality class. I'm also interested in water quality so one course we teach entirely on the Mississippi River.

Chris Weber (environmental engineering major): He's really good at being able to teach us at the level we're at but also to extend our minds to be thinking at that next level of knowledge.

Professor Schnoor: Students should be active learners. That means they are an important part of the process. I learn from them at the same time they learn from me. We create teams, and we work in teams, and I think it empowers the students to become more interested in leading the charge on environmental problems.

Ori J. Srivan: Having someone believe in you is one of the most empowering experiences you can have.

Professor Schnoor: If you can empower enough people, you can begin to make progress, and our students here, I think, feel that they are empowered to really make a difference in the world.

Anna Forkan (urban and regional planning and environmental engineering major): Jerry Schnoor has just been really awesome in allowing me to develop my own plan.

Professor Schnoor: Anna single-handedly has helped us create a new course called Sustainability.

Anna: This is the future of environmental work. Students need to not only understand these social issues, but they need to have the technical skills to solve the environmental problems, and working with government and industry is essential to solving these problems.

Professor Schnoor: We work at the state, national, and international level on matters of environmental importance and assessment.

Ori: Last spring, we had an exciting opportunity to go down to Mexico, to aid the city with their water and sanitation issues. We got to see engineering in action. It allowed me to get a sense of what it's like to do international engineering.

Professor Schnoor: The role of a mentor is someone to help you learn how to think—not what to think, but how to think.

Ori: He's really helped me, as a person, discover what I want to do with my life.

Professor Schnoor: A mentor tries to show how they might attack a problem.

Chris: Mentoring should be a part of everybody's education, and I've been fortunate enough at The University of Iowa here to have that.

Professor Schnoor: We're trying to create people who think, we're trying to learn how to think together in teams, and we're trying to make a small difference in the world at the same time.

Ori: That's what The University of Iowa has done for me. It's taken these complex ideas and made them much more manageable through interpersonal relationships. He's opened to me a world of opportunities.