Svetoslava Todorova is a professor of practice and program director of environmental engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering and Computer Science. (Photo by Amy Manley)
With History in Hand, Professor Uses Archives to Revamp Environmental Courses
(ECS) faculty member ’s two newly revised spring courses will let students get “elbows deep” in rare-materials artifacts offering time-stamped lessons about water pollution and remediation.
Todorova, professor of practice in civil and environmental engineering and director of the environmental engineering program in ECS, reworked the courses to incorporate historic documents housed at (SCRC). She discovered the artifacts during her summer residency as SCRC’s .
SCRC library specialists guided her on handling historic materials and ways to help students glean information. They found a trove of materials about Syracuse’s , long known as one of the most and more recently a model for water reclamation. The SCRC also housed a rare publication recounting the stories of survivors of a caused by mercury pollution in Minamata, Japan.
We asked Todorova how her SCRC residency shaped ideas for new coursework.
Both courses now embed new historical, societal and ethical dimensions through semester-long experiential learning projects.
Environmental Chemistry and Analysis (CEE 471/671) traditionally introduced the concept of alkalinity through lectures and problem sets, presenting chemistry as an abstract subject. In the redesigned course, students will encounter alkalinity through the history of the Solvay Processes Company’s chemical equations and processes by analyzing public documents, company materials, original maps of the Syracuse area and the papers of two former Syracuse University faculty members.
Data recovered from those materials will be combined with contemporary samples students analyze to estimate changes in lake alkalinity over time and connect those changes to specific industrial activities. Activities examining the artifacts in-depth will move students from initial discovery to evidence-based analysis and interpretation.
In The Role of Science in Environmental Governance (HNR 360), students use archival documents to identify areas where a petrochemical and plastics company discharged 27 tons of mercury into the bay over 35 years.
They also examine a rare SCRC book that documents stories of individuals affected by mercury poisoning disease. The materials will help students connect local events to the broader environmental and human consequences of mercury contamination and international efforts leading to the .
It lets students watch history unfold before their eyes, make their own connections and build their own understanding. We take modern engineering and chemistry for granted nowadays, but that knowledge came from the successes and failures of earlier efforts. Reading firsthand about the development of soda ash production and the trial-and-error behind the Solvay Process was enlightening; the faculty members’ public speeches were fascinating.
I hope students feel the same excitement I did when I first encountered these rare documents, and that the guided inquiries I created make learning fun while creating a deeper, lasting understanding of the material.
Todorova relies on public materials as well as archival publications for courses that examine environmental chemistry and analysis and environmental governance. This image shows the water distribution system for Onondaga County combining historic water infrastructure, including the 1907 Otisco Lake main and the Lake Ontario’s 54-inch transmission pipeline from 1960s, with newer water mains from Skaneateles Lake.
Insurance maps of the Solvay Process Company, shown here by SCRC instruction and education librarian Jana Rosinski, are among artifacts Todorova uses in her revamped course. Rosinski says historic materials are still highly relevant because “the ability to understand the historical frameworks that have affected where humanity finds itself currently…is an essential way of thinking to create conscious change for the future.”
As changes occurred through time, updated sheets were added to “Insurance Maps of Syracuse, New York, Volume Three.”This insert from August 1920 illustrated new development in the village of Solvay.
A map of a quadrant of the City of Syracuse is represented in this 1911 edition of “Insurance Maps of Syracuse, New York, Volume Three.”
A “Solvay Life” newsletter article details the opening of the Solvay Process Company in New York and provides a history of the “Solvay process”—the way the company produced sodium carbonate (soda ash). The company combined salt brine with limestone to obtain alkali used to manufacture goods ranging from soap to glass.
This close-up shows storehouse and processing buildings on the Solvay Process Company’s property. (“Insurance Maps of Syracuse, New York, Volume Three”). Over 100 years, a number of industries (including Solvay Process) discharged waste materials like mercury, salt processing residue, ammonia, organic compounds and PCB into Onondaga Lake, contributing to the contamination of its water and sediment.
Materials available for course use include notebooks from two Syracuse University faculty members who were early advocates of Onondaga Lake remediation. Todorova says she didn’t initially realize that two former faculty members in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering were among the earliest advocates for remediating Onondaga Lake. However, materials in the SCRC pointed out their discovery of ecological consequences, including depletion of dissolved oxygen and degradation of aquatic habitat.
Materials from the Daniel F. Jackson Papers detail Onondaga Lake’s topography. Jackson was a professor at Syracuse University and a leading expert in the field of limnology, the study of fresh water.
Todorova visited Minamata Bay for a United Nations scientific convention in 2025 and stopped at this sculpture in the Bay’s waterside park. The memorial park was created on land reclaimed from industrial wastewater contamination occurring between 1932 and 1968. The pollution sickened and killed more than 2000 people who ate seafood contaminated by methylmercury.
In 2025, Professor of Practice Svetoslava Todorova visited a Minamata Bay, Japan, where 2000+ people died from mercury pollution-caused Minimata disease. The silver balls at this memorial represent mercury droplets rolling into the sea. Her revised class uses a Special Collections Research Center rare book recounting stories of survivors of the disease.
Photos of SCRC artifacts by Amy Manley
