Environmental Education

A major thread of my interest in Geography springs from my work in Environmental Education. Back in the mid90s, I "started" Columbia College's Environmental Studies program by posting a note on the faculty refrigerator asking to meet with anyone intersted. The first response was from Peter Meserve, our school's lonely Geographer. Together, we gathered a dozen interested parties, nagged them into a year of meetings, aruged, I did a survey of interest with several 100 students, wrote up the formal self-study, and we eventually got a very interdisciplinary minor in Environmental Studies. Course code, ENVS.

Course codes here are everything. The minor did well enough to evolve into a major, but people drifted away, classes shrank. The science department reformed all this so that ENVS became Environmental Science. They do now have a very good major and minor, well-focused on science--but very few Business or History or English majors are likely to take "Molecular Biotechnology" or "Genetics." And I can't create the Humanities-based courses I need to.

So, I've started canvassing for a new minor, and a new course code--which means talking to dozens of people, handing out a concise piece of paper, looking for an administrative home for the minor. Here's where we are:

Proposal 8/15/2010

Let me suggest that we create a new minor at CC, Ecological Studies, ECOS, to bring together the crucial information about the environment from the Humanities, History, and Social Sciences. The recent change of Environmental Studies to Environmental Science has left CC without a direct and accessible venue to educate non-science majors in issues of Ecological Literacy*. This approximately 95% of our students are the ones who will vote, teach and raise children; they won’t all take a complete science sequence, but they must know how to interpret and evaluate this knowledge. This minor would offer such a venue, not only on the home campus, but especially in the scattered realms we reach through our online and Nationwide campuses. One good place to house this minor would be the Humanities Dept.

Required: (6 hours)

ENVS 115 Introduction to Environmental Science (without lab requirement)
ENVS 272 Introduction to Environmental Literature

Electives: (to complete at least 12 more hours)

BIOL/ENVS 222 Conservation Biology
ECON 310 Environmental and Resource Economics
EDUC 372 Environmental Education
ENGL 360 Environmental Novels
GEOG 220 Introduction to Atmospheric Sciences
GEOG 223 Environmental Disasters
GEOG 251 Resource Management
HIST 352 American Environmental History
PHIL 332 Environmental Ethics
POSC 312 Environmental Politics
any one other ENVS course, 200, 300, or 400-level
ENGL 310, 350, 360, 361, 362, or 370, when on appropriate topic
233/333/433 Topics, pre-approved

--------------------------- 18 hours total for this minor

Suggestions for courses that could be developed:

PSYC 3xx Environmental Psychology [Chris Mazurek]
PSYC 333 Existential Phenomenology [Graham Higgs]
SOCI 3xx Environmental Sociology [Yngve Digernes]
MGMT 4xx Green Business Practices
COMM 3xx Green Social Movements [Amy Darnell]
COMM 4xx The Environmental Message: Advertising, Rhetoric, Film
RELI or GEOG 2xx Religious Views of Nature and the Environment
ARTS 3xx Representing Nature

*"The great challenge of our time is to build and nurture sustainable communities – communities that are designed in such a way that their ways of life, businesses, economies, physical structures, and technologies do not interfere with nature's inherent ability to sustain life. The first step in this endeavor is to understand the principles of organization that ecosystems have developed to sustain the web of life. This understanding is what we call ecological literacy.

"Teaching this ecological knowledge – which may be called 'principles of ecology,' 'principles of sustainability,' 'principles of community,' or even the 'basic facts of life' – will be the most important role of education in the next century. " by Fritjof Capra, http://www.hent.org/ecoliteracy.htm

“Ecological literacy (also referred to as ecoliteracy) is the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible. To be ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organization of ecological communities (i.e. ecosystems) and using those principles for creating sustainable human communities. The term was coined by American educator David W. Orr and physicist Fritjof Capra in the 1990s- thereby a new value entered education; the “well-being of the earth”. An ecologically literate society would be a sustainable society which did not destroy the natural environment on which they depend. Ecological literacy is a powerful concept as it creates a foundation for an integrated approach to environmental problems. Advocates champion eco-literacy as a new educational paradigm emerging around the poles of holism, systems thinking, sustainability, and complexity.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_literacy

Some hope for this. Waiting for the Humanities Dept. to thumbs up or down.

Later