Student spotlight: Keenan Norton

In rural Dominican Republic last summer, Carnegie Mellon student organization Juntos worked in partnership with community leaders. Keenan Norton poured concrete foundations, painted houses, and planted coffee trees. The projects were developed according to community needs.

The mission of Juntos is civic engagement for Spanish-speaking communities. To prepare for the trip, Norton and his co-president designed and presented a series of educational sessions for Juntos members about what it means to work with a community abroad. "We are very thoughtful about saying phrases like civic engagement and community partnership, instead of service and volunteering, where you're implicitly creating a power imbalance between people," he explains.

Norton has connected with communities here in Pittsburgh, too. At the Latino Community Center, he is a volunteer math tutor. He meets weekly with a student whose family is new to Pittsburgh.

"There are so many amazing ways to be involved and interact with the city," Norton says. He enjoys mountain biking on trails in Frick Park and hopes to one day join the local trail building community in taking care of the trails. Mountain biking trails have wooden features, like a small bridge over a rocky section. There are also challenge features. "They're fun because they're so different from the rest of the trail," says Norton. "For example, a 'skinny' is like a balance beam for your bike. It's a thin slab of wood that you roll across."

To learn the skills he will need to build these structures, Norton is taking an Introduction to Woodworking course at TechSpark, the College of Engineering makerspace. Although he has a purpose behind it, the course is the first one Norton has taken that does not count for any of his three majors: chemical engineering, Hispanic studies, and environmental and sustainability studies.

Norton's interest in chemical engineering was solidified in the introductory course. It teaches first-year students technical skills that they will draw on throughout the rest of their chemical engineering courses. "You get right into the content," Norton says. He found it riveting.

"The way that chemical engineers think is really cool to me," he says. "The way that you set up and solve process flow sheets and think about solving many different things at once is a powerful way to view the world."

The way that you set up and solve process flow sheets and think about solving many things at once is a powerful way to view the world.

Keenan Norton, Undergraduate student, Chemical Engineering

His environmental and sustainability studies classes keep him focused on the planet as he goes through the chemical engineering curriculum. Norton is part of a new wave of chemical engineers who are designing processes and solutions for a more sustainable future.

Learning Spanish allows Norton to bridge past and present. He started learning the language to connect with his Latin heritage. As he continued classes at CMU, he liked the Hispanic studies program so much that he added the major.

All three of Norton's majors come together in his undergraduate research. "My research portfolio is all about water quality and access for minority communities in Latin America," he says.

Through the Summer Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship (SURA) program, Norton worked with history professor Abigail Owen the summer after his first year. They looked at historical challenges to water access around the world. Norton focused on Latin America. At the same time, he had an internship working on a wastewater treatment process. Seeing two very different sides of water confirmed his interest in continuing to work in the area.

The spring of his sophomore year, Norton joined Hispanic studies professor Therese Tardio looking at barriers to water access for indigenous communities in Latin America. He also does wastewater treatment analysis in Terry Collins' green chemistry lab. Norton prepares wastewater samples for degradation analysis.

"The lab has spent a few decades developing a series of catalysts. We put the catalyst in a water sample with some contaminant of interest, something that biological enzymes have trouble degrading, like the forever chemicals you hear about in the news," Norton explains.

Norton is excited to be working at the forefront of this technology. "If we're putting contaminants in our water, we should be able to break them down at the same rate that we're putting them in. That's not the case right now," he says. "We're trying to figure out how."

As a chemical engineer, Norton has learned a distinct way to view the world around him. "That perspective is so versatile. I have ChemE friends who are doing all sorts of things, from energy and pharmaceuticals to economics and computer science," he says. With his chemical engineering courses as a foundation, Norton is building a framework for solving problems creatively and methodically.