Quantifying Sucralose in a Water-Treatment Wetlands: Service-Learning in the Analytical Chemistry Laboratory

Service-learning (SL) is an active learning approach that connects the knowledge a student acquires in the classroom to an application that benefits the community. Increasingly popular in the chemistry curriculum, service-learning is reported to provide student benefits including improved cognitive goals; increased academic, interpersonal, and leadership skills; increased ability to apply course concepts to real-world situations; and increased community engagement. For the work reported here, an analytical chemistry laboratory was modified to indude a service-learning component with the goal of allowing students to apply their newly acquired analytical skills to relevant, real-world samples; to learn new analytical techniques; and to develop professional communication skills. Students implemented a study of the wastewater effluent at the Orlando Easterly Wetlands, an engineered water polishing facility that removes nutrients from treated wastewater. Students designed a sampling strategy, collected samples in the field, and performed standard analysis on the water, induding pH, chloride, total dissolved solids, and phosphorus. Students also tested the water for the artificial sweetener, sucralose, and characterized the concentration throughout the flow path of the wetlands. Sucralose has been proposed as an indicator of contamination of natural waters by anthropogenic waste. This type of analysis has not been performed for this public utility until now, and the students shared the results in a public seminar. Student learning outcomes were compared to those in a conventional section, with SL students showing comparable subject mastery and improved self-efficacy.