A student and associate professor at Wichita State are working together to gather data on carbon emissions produced by the university.
Stewart McClelland came to Wichita State with an interest in green energy. When he began his education as a mechanical engineering student, he began doing research under associate mechanical engineering professor Ikram Ahmed as part of the honors First Year Research Experience (FYRE).
In continuation of a 2019 study, Ahmed and McClelland sent out a survey in hopes of learning more about carbon dioxide emissions at the university. The questionnaire asks participants to answer questions about their commuting habits.
“If people need to drive long distances to come to this campus, then that means they’re emitting a lot of carbon, especially if they’re driving a car fueled by fossil fuels,” Ahmed said. “If transportation comes out (of the survey) to be a major source of emissions, we (the university) may want to start looking into how to improve our commuting experience here.”
Large emissions of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas, have contributed to climate change. Ahmed said that the connection between energy usage and global warming sparked his interest in sustainability.
“I have been teaching our students here about thermodynamics … the solid science of heat,” Ahmed said. “We teach these things because mechanical engineers are the ones that design power plants, that run power plants and improve power and design.”
Ahmed said he bikes to campus in hopes of inspiring others to do the same.
“I know my biking to campus is not going to make a dent in anything we do here,” he said. “But before I can encourage the whole campus to start biking, I gotta start.”
Ahmed and McClelland consider the survey and other sustainability-motivated research to be a passion project of theirs. Ahmed said it is important to teach students to consider the consequences their actions have on the environment.
“Eventually, our students go out in the world and do things and their actions and their work will have effects on the larger world outside of the campus,” Ahmed said. “We need to