Faculty Profiles


Chris Keil

Charles "Chris" B. Keil, Ph.D., CIH

Professor of Environmental Science

On Faculty since 2012
630.752.7271
Meyer Science Center 058


In 1987, after graduating from Wheaton College, Chris worked on National Toxicology Program research projects prior to attending graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. During his time in Illinois, Chris was a member of the Illinois Army National Guard. After his graduate studies, Chris began teaching in the Environmental Health Program at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. While there, Chris taught a variety of environmental health classes including: Industrial Hygiene, Air Quality, Environmental Assessment Methods, Epidemiology, Industrial Ventilation, and others. Chris was also an adjunct faculty member in the Occupational Hygiene Program at the University of Toledo Medical Center where he taught and directed student research.

During the summers while Chris was at BGSU, he also taught at the Wheaton College Field Station in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He was himself a student there in 1985 and finds some of his deepest professional and personal contentment in the vibrant Christian living and learning community that exists there each summer. Chris enjoys working internationally; he has taught short courses and done research in Ethiopia a number of times. He has also taught in Norway, Germany, Hungary and Moldova. Chris enjoys hiking, outdoor activities, model building and playing strategy games. He and his wife Maureen both enjoy gardening, traveling, and spending time with students.

University of Illinois at Chicago
Ph.D., Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Science, 1994

University of Illinois at Chicago
M.S., Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Science, 1991

Illinois Institute of Technology
Non-degree study, Environmental Engineering

Wheaton College
B.S., Biology, 1987

  • Science Education
  • Pollution Assessment
  • Environmental Science
  • Indoor Air Pollution

Experimental Measurements of the Interzonal Air Flow Parameter (β) for Two-Zone Concentration Modeling
American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, Baltimore MD, 2016

Industrial Health: Monitoring and Sampling
22nd Annual Northwest Ohio Safety and Health Day, Perrysburg OH, May 2012

Random Airspeed Variability Within a Room and its Implications for Exposure Modeling Poster 402-12
American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition, Portland OR, May 2011

Exposure modeling as an integral part of exposure assessment
Norwegian Petroleum Industry Association, January 2011

Chris’s research centers around the topic of environmental pollution assessment. He is currently doing work on the transport of indoor air pollution. Recently, Chris has contributed to projects on the measurement and statistical interpretation of pollutant levels in Addis Ababa's drinking water, shallow wells in Northwest Ohio, and indoor and outdoor air pollution in Ethiopia.

Chris has also done research in science education. He was one of the directors of a NIH-funded project that developed and implemented problem based learning units addressing locally pertinent environmental problems in 5th through 9th grades. The project demonstrated that contextualized, interdisciplinary hands-on / minds-on learning improves students environmental awareness, standardized tests scores, and scientific processing skills.

Low-tech waste stabilization ponds in the service of the global poor: The WASTE Program, Geoscience for the Public Good and Global Development: Toward a Sustainable Future
Wallett, K., Greenberg, J., Kvasnicka, J., Pickens, B., Jackson, M., Gamble. C., Keil, C., Clark, J., and Lewis, R., 2016

Small-scale waste-stabilisation ponds for rural communities: an undergraduate experimental venture, Waterlines
Greenberg, J., Gamble, C., Pickens. B., Keil, C., Wallett, K., Edgren, D., Lewis, R., and Clark, J., 2015

Experimental Measurements of Near-Source Exposure Modeling Parameters, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
Keil C.B., 2015

Mass Balance Source Apportionment Modeling of Indoor Air Pollution Exposures During the Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
Keil, C., Coleman, Q., Brown, A. and Kassa, H., 2014