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When a group of Elmhurst College professors began looking for a complex public policy issue that might provide the basis of a collaborative research project for faculty and students recently, they didn’t have to look very far.
Just six miles north of campus is O’Hare International Airport, which has stood at the center of a roiling public debate over plans for its expansion. In response, faculty from 12 academic departments led 12 students in a study of the complicated debate.
According to Jon L. Johnson, professor and chair of mathematics, the goal was not to shape public policy decisions but to introduce students to key research skills and methodologies.
“We’re not concerned with coming up with a solution for policy-makers, but with putting into the students’ hands the skills for attacking problems and working on problems in teams,” says Dr. Johnson. “We want them to come away with the idea, ‘Yes, I can do research and I’m excited about it.’”
The O’Hare debate centered on plans to add one runway, reconfigure five others, and build a new terminal at the massive airport. Approved in 2005, the plan will nearly double capacity at O’Hare, which is famous for chronic delays that disrupt travel from coast to coast. The expansion could take up to 15 years to complete and cost an estimated $15 billion. “This has to be bold and dynamic,” declared Mayor Richard M. Daley in announcing the plan in December 2002.
The plan drew stiff opposition. Some suburban mayors and other political leaders railed against the increased airplane noise and ground traffic they say airport expansion would bring. Other policy-makers favored building a new airport in south suburban Peotone, and keeping O’Hare as it is. The ongoing arguments for and against expansion of the metropolitan area’s primary airport touched on everything from economics to urban planning, from governance to ecology. That is what made the issue appealing to Elmhurst’s student researchers.
“We were looking for a local issue with national impact,” Dr. Johnson said, “and O’Hare is right in our backyard. It’s a complex issue, so complex that it can be approached by a study group from a number of angles. It provides a lesson in how to come up with a tractable question to research.”
As a research topic, the O’Hare issue had an added advantage: it is clearly relevant to the quality of life in metropolitan Chicago, and to the quality of air transportation nationwide. “So often as an undergraduate, you work on stuff that seems not pertinent to your own life,” Dr. Johnson said. “What’s going on here certainly is pertinent. We all throw the phrase ‘real world’ around a lot. This is ‘real world’ in all its intricacies, an opportunity for students to grapple with real problems.”
Students interested in participating in the O’Hare research project were asked to submit applications. That spring, the chosen 12 student-researchers participated in a seminar that provided an overview of the expansion debate, including its environmental, economic, and political aspects. The students then formed three teams of four to ten members. Each team would consider a different aspect of the expansion controversy.
The teams selected their own research topics, subject to approval from faculty advisers. One team examined how runway noise affects children living near the airport. Another studied the impact of airport proximity on wetlands diversity. A third studied lobbying efforts by interest groups on both sides of the issue, and analyzed how those groups state their cases.
Collaboration among students from various academic fields was central to the project. Students participated in team-building exercises and studied ways to foster collaboration in research. The director of Elmhurst’s Center for Professional Excellence, Lawrence B. Carroll, led sessions on collaboration between teams. Research continued during the eight-week Summer Term, with teams meeting weekly to share their findings.
One goal of the study, Dr. Johnson says, was to give students experience in communicating specialized knowledge with audiences that do not share that knowledge. Thus, the teams offered presentations on their ongoing research to new students at orientation in August. In the fall, the research teams presented findings at forums open to the general public and to the news media. In the spring, they presented papers at the annual meeting of the National Conferences for Undergraduate Research, at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater. Finally, the findings were published in Investigations, the journal of original research by Elmhurst students.
The O’Hare study grew out of discussions among an informal group of a dozen or so Elmhurst faculty that meet regularly to explore research opportunities, especially those that involve student-faculty collaboration. After the National Conferences for Undergraduate Research issued a request for proposals, the faculty group began searching for a research project on which Elmhurst students could work profitably. Dr. Johnson wrote the research proposal with Dianne L. Chambers, associate professor of English.
The faculty group agreed unanimously that the complex O’Hare expansion debate would stimulate undergraduate researchers. What’s more, the professors agreed that the debate would best be addressed by interdisciplinary teams, an approach that would appeal to the funding group. The study was funded by a $50,000 grant from the National Conferences for Undergraduate Research, underwritten by the Alice and Leslie E. Lancy Foundation.
Thirteen faculty members—from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences—agreed to help lead the study and mentor the student-researchers. Among the departments represented were biology, English, geography, history, nursing, physics, political science, and psychology.
To Dr. Johnson, the study illustrates not only the research opportunities available to Elmhurst undergraduates, but also the faculty’s commitment to lifelong learning and research. “This institution encourages people to remain active in scholarship,” he says. “Our [mathematics] department has wonderful research credentials. I would stack them up against any department of our size.”
In the O’Hare study, Elmhurst students experienced first-hand that institutional commitment to research. “It’s good for students to see how faculty approach different problems—and to see that, while faculty may have a particular expertise, they don’t always have expertise in every area,” Dr. Johnson says. “We can be role models for collaboration.”
By Andrew Santella |
