Westminster College

Great Salt Lake is an extreme ecosystem and a unique environmental feature.  This lake is the focus of a number of ongoing faculty/student projects at the Great Salt Lake Institute, a distinctive, interdisciplinary collaborative at Westminster College.  This lake has enormous potential for novel undergraduate research projects in an array of scientific disciplines.  A team at the college will link projects with a lake theme such that Great Salt Lake is the fabric for Building Research, Innovation and Novel Experimentation (BRINE).  The overarching goals of BRINE are: (1) Transform the landscape of undergraduate science education by adopting a theme-based, place-based research model that can be replicated at other institutions; (2) Build and support an interdisciplinary scholarship community centered around a unique geographic resource; (3) Impact the learning outcomes for science students; (4) Impact the scholarship and motivation of science faculty; (5) Evaluate the BRINE program and use data to inform the entire undergraduate research program at Westminster.  The College will draw on its proximity to Great Salt Lake and new undergraduate research facilities to help accomplish these goals.