Initial+Proposal

Although environmental science is beneficial to the planet's well-being, I would like to know in exactly what ways it is so, aside from obvious things such as reducing the emissions from factories and cars and what-not. How is the study of environmental science beneficial to the planet's well-being, and what has improved as a result? In other words, I would like to research and learn how humans, over the course of history, studied the environments and responded to their findings accordingly? What type of technology was created? What laws and regulations were put forth to help the environment grow and stay healthy? The reason I want to know these is because I support a healthy environment, as it is crucial to the planet's well-being. In case you were wondering, I plan to major in some sort of environmental field, whether it be simply environmental science, environmental engineering, or what have you.

This project will (hopefully) give me a greater understanding of the nature of the work to be put forth in order to be a successful environmental scientist or engineer. It will not only be beneficial to me, but it will give others an understanding of how truly difficult it is to be truly environmentally-friendly. I want to do this project because I want to get a personal feel for how an environmental science/engineer conducts research/analyzes data on a regular basis, and how the data is used. I am not entirely sure how I want to conduct my project, but I do know that I would much rather be outdoors, doing "field work" as opposed to sitting in a swivel chair all day researching and typing up my findings. It's the aspect of field studies that really has me interested in the subject. Because the government has established a few environment-related departments, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), I think they would be a good overview source for my project, as they are three of the biggest environmental agencies in the United States. There's also the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Association Aside (NOAA); aside from that, they all focus on different aspects of the environment, and have many scientists working in these departments. The EPA could probably serve as a research keystone, as that agency and what they do probably applies to my potential project than the other agencies, but that is certainly subject to change as my project is not at all written in stone.

This project will not only involve research done on a computer or read in books, but I feel it will require a lot of hands-on research as well. It will require a lot of time researching, especially if I am to conduct "hands-on" research. Hands-on research requires a lot of time to not only gather research, but also analyzing and recording the following data. I am not certain how my topic expert will help me, but my mentor will help keep me on task and keep me focused. Although he does not have much of any knowledge on the topic of environmental science, I converse with him just about every day so we will be able to communicate about my topic, and evaluate progress made. I am going to find an environmental expert for my topic expert, who, I assume, will be able to provide me with the basics of environmental science and inform me how data is analyzed and recorded, and what types of tests are used to find certain types of data. Perhaps I could, under their supervision of course, conduct studies and tests as well, to get an understanding of how the science works. As for potential challenges and problems that will be faced, I assume most of them would stem from the project portion, as I would probably have some source of error in my research, assuming that a project involving gathering and analyzing data is what I am going to pursue.