CEE’s Emily Kumpel Named a UMass Amherst Public Interest Technology (PIT) Faculty Fellow

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Associate Professor Emily Kumpel of the UMass Amherst Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) Department has been named as one of the university’s nine 2024-2025 Public Interest Technology (PIT) Faculty Fellows. With the fellowship, Kumpel will receive $6,000 to support the development of her new CEE course on “Sustainability Engineering for Infrastructure Systems,” in which students will learn to assess the sustainability of engineering projects in a critical, hands-on, holistic, long-term way. 

According to the PIT article, “The fellowship [program] focuses on building a public-interest-focused interdisciplinary community to explore PIT questions and integrative solutions. Faculty projects are aimed at addressing and potentially solving complex problems with public-interest impacts and reducing social disparities through the responsible and ethical use of technology.”

As Kumpel explains the work of her Water Infrastructure Research Group, “We conduct research using interdisciplinary approaches to understand the complex engineered, environmental, and human systems to enable the provision of safe, reliable, and sustainable drinking-water and sanitation services.”

In that context, Kumpel says that her new course will be offered for the first time in the Spring of 2025. 

“Through this course,” says Kumpel, “students will learn to assess sustainability critically in the context of civil infrastructure and technology systems. This includes learning and practicing methods that quantitatively evaluate sustainability and holistically consider the lifespan of engineered systems.” 

According to Kumpel, the students will specifically learn to identify what are important and relevant questions around sustainability, to investigate data availability and assumptions, to develop models and frameworks for analysis, to understand impact categories, and to assess strengths and limitations of different approaches. 

“The course material will engage with [academic engineering] literature and examples on sustainability from environmental, social, and economic perspectives,” says Kumpel.

“In this course,” explains Kumpel, “I plan to have students pursue projects that align with their own interests…The goal is to conduct a life-cycle assessment on an engineered system. Students will be able to complete a project on a topic of their choice, or to work on a project set up by or suggested by the professor.” 

Kumpel adds that “To set up well-scoped projects, I plan to reach out to UMass and community organizations to identify student projects.” 

As examples of these potential projects, Kumpel suggests modeling the environmental and equity impacts of the formerly proposed biomass-energy facility in Springfield; comparing renovation to new construction options for campus buildings; or comparing the impact of different home-water-treatment filters.

Kumpel will use the PIT funding to support a graduate student who can assist in setting up the projects, including communicating with stakeholders, compiling relevant materials, testing the proposed methods, and compiling case-study materials for the class. 

In addition to receiving funding support, the nine UMass PIT Fellows will meet monthly throughout the 2025 academic year to discuss their work, focus on capstone-course development as facilitated by the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning, and work across campus and the broader PIT network to advance their projects. (October 2024)