Drs. Joshua Steffan and Craig Whippo, associate professors teaching for the natural sciences department at Dickinson State University (DSU), have been awarded grants totaling $110,200 to purchase a carbon dioxide monitoring system for their department. The equipment is designed to measure carbon dioxide flux from soil; however, it can be adapted to measure the release of carbon dioxide from any source.

Half of the funding was secured from a matching grant from the manufacturer, LI-COR Biosciences. The grant is designed to place sophisticated, research-grade scientific instrumentation into the hands of students and faculty. The remaining funding was received through equipment grants from North Dakota IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (ND INBRE, NIH) and the North Dakota Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (ND EPSCoR, NSF).

The instrumentation will be used in biology, geology, and soil science courses in addition to many undergraduate research projects. The large amount of data generated with this instrument will allow students to practice the analysis and visualization of large data sets.

Drs. Steffan and Whippo traveled with Drs. Paul Barnhart and Eric Brevik to LI-COR headquarters in Lincoln, Nebraska, in June to receive training on the instrumentation. “I believe that this technology will allow interdisciplinary interactions between Dickinson State’s faculty and students,” stated Dr. Barnhart. “Integrating these types of technologies in the classroom has been shown to increase student engagement and student retention.”