Physics students spend the early part of their training attending physics and mathematics lectures, solving problem sets, and experimenting in laboratory courses. The program is typically intensive and fairly rigid. They have little opportunity to follow their own curiosity or apply their knowledge. There have been many attempts to address this…

This paper describes a community-based learning (CBL) project involving the economic redevelopment of two environmentally contaminated former industrial sites or "brownfields." The study was conducted over four semesters by several economics classes and involved assembling a database, measuring the impact of the brownfields on…