Land reclamation students tour a community waste site on the Enoch Cree First Nation as the first step in creating a plan for remediation.
Nobody expected wild dogs. But that's the beauty of taking a capstone project out of the classroom and into the working world: real-life problems materialize that demand real solutions.
The dogs showed up when land reclamation students working on their capstone course re-examined a community waste site on the Enoch Cree First Nation for which they were creating a land reclamation plan, which includes contaminant remediation, soil building and revegetation.
On the students' first site visit, existing plants and a large and unexpected weed issue captured their attention. Returning for more research, they realized the site was also attracting feral dogs.
"So we made sure that everyone had a rabies shot before they (next) came on site," said fourth-year student Shanon McConnell, one of the project's co-managers. Then they factored fencing into their reclamation plan.
Capstone courses in the Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences allow students to apply studies in their major to a practical project, and are a mandatory element of their degree program.
It's unlikely that McConnell's team would even have known about any extra issues if instructor Anne Naeth hadn't made a substantial change to this capstone course this year. Instead of creating hypothetical situations in which land reclamation is required, Naeth connected them with actual "clients" for whom they essentially provided professional consulting services.
While one of her classroom teams worked on the Enoch project, which includes two oil well sites as well as the waste site, other students tackled the decommissioning of the Northlands racetrack and associated areas, and a third group worked on reclaiming a portion of the Genesee coal mine west of Edmonton.
The clients aren't obliged to use the reclamation plans, but they certainly could, said Naeth, because the students applied themselves as intensely as they would at a paid job.
"They worked in teams to create a high quality technical document that can stand up to scrutiny by policy enforcers and government," she said.
This year, their work included a twist not introduced before: creating recommendations for a client with unique feelings and connections to the land, the Enoch Cree First Nation.
The students on that team began by preparing themselves culturally for a round table discussion with Chief William Morin IV and four of Enoch's council members. McConnell asked Aboriginal Student Services on campus for advice on terms preferred by First Nations, and for instruction on preparing pouches of gift tobacco that traditionally signify love and open minds before a meeting. The campus service also held a smudging ceremony so the students could symbolically cleanse.
All the teams were observers during the round table, while the team assigned to Enoch also diligently read the Indian Act, and asked for clarification on such questions as whether the reserve has internal bylaws. At the Genesee site, students toured the site with Capital Power's senior engineers who pointed out its specific challenges.
One of those big issues is that the Genesee site is vast, said Naeth. "After mining there's a big issue around soil rebuilding, so the students had to think about where they're going to get appropriate soil material, and not have it cost a fortune."
Over at the Northlands site, a novel real-world problem concerned the area where fireworks had been set off for decades. That team had to investigate the manufacturing history of older-era fireworks, and discover the kinds of environmentally unfriendly metals they might have contained.
With their capstone course completed, the students are ready to show the public their projects and solutions. Everyone is welcome to drop into the ALES atrium to view posters of their projects and chat with the students on Thursday, April 6, between 11 and 5 p.m.