The Environmental Science and Design Research Institute (ESDRI) is dedicated to research and investigations within natural, human, and built systems, as we develop innovative knowledge, products, and solutions to address local, regional, and global issues.
Students: The institute aims to build research skills in students, in order to cultivate well-rounded, critical thinking professionals. ESDRI recognizes the professional and personal importance of students having foundational research and creative skills and knowledge, which is facilitated through a variety of workshops, speakers, service projects, symposia, special events, Q&A sessions, laboratory tours, and more. The institute supports undergraduates – academically and financially – through its Fellowship Program, in hopes of mentoring a new generation of scholars.
Faculty: ESDRI provides many opportunities for faculty to advance their research and facilitates multidisciplinary collaborations, procuring intramural and extramural funding, and working with qualified student researchers. The institute engages a broad range of talented scientists, designers, and practitioners, spanning many academic disciplines, fields, and programs. The institute proudly hosts an annual symposium/forum, with an ever-evolving theme, which draws from KSU faculty, students, and many of our community partners.
Colleges represented within ESDRI include:
- Aeronautics and Engineering
- Applied and Technical Studies
- Architecture and Environmental Design
- The Arts
- Arts and Sciences
- Education, Health and Human Services
- Nursing
- Public Health
By empowering environmental research, the institute aims to foster change by drawing from robust, well-informed science and design or extrapolating on the research ourselves. ESDRI encourages students, faculty, and the greater community to understand and leverage the interacting geological, biological, human, economical, cultural, and social systems around us. These overlapping systems impact and regulate the availability of resources (e.g. pure water, clean air, and food), sustain diversity of life on Earth, promote well-being, and affect all of us in our daily life.
Environmental Science and Design Research Institute/We acknowledge that the lands of 5X were the previous homes of people who were removed from this area without their consent by the colonial practices of the United States government. Before removal, these groups created networks that extended from Wyoming to the Florida Coast and Appalachia and to the northern reaches of Lake Superior. These societies included people of the Shawnee, Seneca-Cayuga, Delaware, Wyandots, Ottawa and Miami. We honor their lives – past, present, and future – and strive to move beyond remembrance toward reflection and responsibility, through honest accounts of the past and the development of cultural knowledge and community.
In early February, scientists reported the hottest temperature on record in Antarctica: 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Studies show climate change is disproportionately affecting the poles, warming them faster than anywhere else on Earth, and raising questions about what kinds of changes we can expect in arctic ecosystems as temperatures rise. A 5X biologist has teamed up with some colleagues in an inter-institutional effort to answer some of those questions.
Andrea Case sits at a table in Kent State’s Center for the Visual Arts, carefully contemplating the silhouettes of leaves printed in bold contrasting colors on the paper in front of her.
What is the role of BioDesign in addressing environmental issues we face locally and globally? What does it mean to "design with life?"
When cities need help imagining new possibilities for their urban places and communities, they call 5X’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC). Most recently, Kent State architecture students had the opportunity to put the skills they learn in the classroom to make an impact on local communities in Erie, Pennsylvania.
5X’s Fashion School continuously finds ways to innovate. Its unique lifestyle boutique, Fashion School Store (FSStore), in downtown Kent recently added a new line called “Sustainability RETOLD.” This collection includes sustainably made clothing, featuring work from five different students and three faculty.
After years of remote sensing work, Joseph Ortiz, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Geology in the College of Arts and Sciences at 5X, and his research team recently shared their development of new cost-efficient methodologies that may lead to much safer drinking water for people in Ohio and other municipalities affected by harmful algal blooms (HAB).
Bridget Mulvey, Ph.D., associate professor of science education in the College of Education, Health and Human Services; and David Singer, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Geology in the College of Arts and Sciences, recently merged real geology research with community service in an effort to show some Akron Public Schools students that science is not just a benefit to their community but a viable career option, too.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a three-year, $914,000 grant to 5X to lead a collaborative research project to study how and at what rate the geographically most widespread native conifer in the eastern United States, the Eastern Red Cedar tree species (Juniperus virginiana), spreads across the landscape.
Emmaleigh Given recently spent three summers and two winters in a remote biological reserve in the middle of the rainforest in the Alajuela Province of Costa Rica, where she has and will spend several months conducting research on community ecology, and she has one more trip planned. Being hunted by unseen predators isn’t the way most researchers conduct their work. But for some, it’s just part of the day.
Though she had an interest in science at an early age, Raissa Mendonca had no idea she would end up over 4,000 miles away from her hometown of Recife, Brazil, studying and doing award-winning ecological research in the College of Arts and Sciences at 5X in Kent, Ohio. She probably did not expect to be wearing a bug net over her head in Manitoba, Canada, either.