Digital Commons Network^™

A New Sustainable Environmental Education Toolbox For Botanic Gardens, Parks & Arboreta, John J. Pipoly Iii

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures

No abstract provided.

"Breaking Out Of The Bubble": Becoming Self-Reflexive In Community-Based Learning Classes At Swarthmore College, Natalia Choi , '15

Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards

In my Sociology/Anthropology and Educational studies thesis, I explore the processes of self-reflexivity in the context of community-based learning (CBL) classes at Swarthmore College. Drawing upon interviews with professors and students in CBL classes, written materials such as syllabi and students’ reflections, and participant observation in CBL classes, my findings suggest that professors have a critical role to play in supporting students’ process of becoming more self-reflexive. By pairing students’ experiences with critical reflection in the curricula and leading by example, professors can guide students to have profound learning experiences about themselves as well as other communities. Such engagement in …

Peripheral No More: Repositioning Narratives For Empowerment And Change In Sustainability Education, Rell G. Ohlson

Leadership for Sustainability Education Comprehensive Papers

The field of sustainability education challenges dominant modes of thought, with a particular emphasis on the need for diversity and "multiple perspectives" in order to confront complex issues (Capra, 2005; Sterling, 2001; Wheatley, 2006). If this is the case, why are certain perspectives still missing and what narratives have been given prominence? This comprehensive paper examines the problems of a dominant narrative in sustainability education. In order for sustainability education to be truly transformative and empowering for students, leaders, and their communities, the narrative of sustainability must be repositioned from a dominant, white, middle-class context to one that affirms, values …

Characterizing Equipment Cost, Fuel Use, And Emissions For Earthwork Activities, Phil Lewis, Yongwei Shan, Apif Hajji, Elizabeth Hazzard

The Professional Constructor

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationships between construction equipment costs, fuel use, and air pollutant emissions to make more informed decisions in construction planning and achieve more sustainable construction activity. This paper presents an estimating approach that combines both construction and environmental data to assess the relationships between equipment costs, fuel use, and emissions. To characterize these relationships, a case study is presented for a dozer performing a bulk excavation activity. Sensitivity analyses based on soil type, dozing distance, and engine horsepower rating are presented. Results indicate that there is little difference in the equipment total …

Full Issue, Volume 39, Number 1

The Professional Constructor

No abstract provided.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 47, February 26, 2015, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 039, Number 21, February 17, 2015, Grand Valley State University

2014-2015, Volume 39

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 42, February 9, 2015, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Lanthorn, Vol. 49, No. 40, February 2, 2015, Grand Valley State University

Volume 49, July 7, 2014 - June 1, 2015

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Academic Affairs Happenings, Volume 3, Issue 2, Office Of Academic Affairs, Roger Williams University

Academic Affairs Newsletter

The Newsletter is an ongoing publication that highlights the wide range of work in which RWU faculty and students are engaged.

2015 Program For Celebrating Scholarship & Creativity Day, Katie M. Vogel

Celebrating Scholarship & Creativity Day (2011-2017)

No abstract provided.

Sustainability In The Curriculum And Teaching Of Economics: Transforming Introductory Macroeconomics, Madhavi Venkatesan

Economics Faculty Publications

Present models of economic growth primarily focus on the role of expenditures as captured in the commonly cited economic indicator, gross domestic product (GDP), where GDP is defined as the sum of final goods and services sold within a country’s natural borders. Noting that a country’s expenditures are referred to as “aggregate expenditures” and that the majority of spending is specific to consumption or consumer spending, especially in the United States where this spending category is nearly two-thirds of annual GDP (other expenditure categories for GDP include investment spending, government spending and foreign spending as proxied by net exports), there …

Putting Impact First: Community-University Partnerships To Advance Authentic Neighborhood Sustainability, Michelle L. Holliday, Tony Defalco, Jacob Sherman

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

This article profiles a partnership between the Living Cully ecodistrict and Portland State University’s Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative. The case studies presented in this article explore how Living Cully leveraged PSU assets to advance their goals, highlighting successes and lessons learned. This article also addresses how the partnership was formed, what makes the partnership innovative, the role of interdisciplinary/intercommunity organizational strategies, and how the community partner commits to urban sustainability and social justice.

Emotions In Teaching Environmental Education, Cassie F. Quigley

Publications

This op-ed article examines the emotional impact of teaching environmental science and considers how certain emotions can broaden viewpoints and other emotions narrow them. Specifically, it investigates how the topic of climate change became an emotional debate in a science classroom because of religious beliefs. Through reflective practice and examination of positionality, the author explored how certain teaching practices of pre-service science teachers created a productive space and other practices closed down the conversations. This article is framed with theories that explore both divergent and shared viewpoints.

Nurturing Environmental Literacy At Colby College: Higher Education And The Environmental Crisis, Molly Nash

Honors Theses

The environmental crisis will affect all people, career paths, and academic disciplines. Acknowledging this, does higher education have an obligation to educate all students for environmental literacy (EL)? This study reviews literature on how to effectively assess and implement EL initiatives and highlights how other colleges successfully nurture EL in all students. This study also uses quantitative and qualitative survey measures to understand student levels of EL at Colby College and to highlight specific programming or curriculum that leads to high EL levels in students. Findings include significantly different EL scores between environmental studies student respondents and respondents in all …

Gvsu Press Releases, 2015, Grand Valley State University

University Press Releases, 1961-Present

A compilation of press releases for the year 2015 submitted by University Communications (formerly News & Information Services) to news agencies concerning the people, places, and events related to Grand Valley State University.

Integrating Geoscience Into Undergraduate Education About Environment, Society, And Sustainability Using Place-Based Learning: Three Examples, David Gosselin, Steven Burian, Tim Lutz, Julie Maxson

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

From water to energy, and from climate change to natural hazards, the geosciences (marine, Earth, and atmospheric science) have an important role to play in addressing a wide range of societal issues, with particular relevance to how humans can live sustainably on Earth. Although arguably important to developing solutions for many societal issues, more often than not, students have limited exposure to the geosciences in high school or college. To address this geoscience literacy problem, the Interdisciplinary Teaching of Geoscience for a Sustainable Future (InTeGrate) Talent Expansion Center has engaged members of the geoscience community and their colleagues in allied …

Vulnerability, Robert W. Spires

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Vulnerability is susceptibility to, or risk of exposure to, hazards and stresses related to social problems, environmental problems, economic problems, or political problems. The word vulnerability is often used in conjunction with poverty and may specifically imply vulnerability to poverty or to poverty-related issues. Individuals, communities, groups, regions, and nations can be vulnerable and poverty increases this vulnerability.

Latina/O High School Students' Standpoint On Environmental Justice In A Border Community: A Phenomenological Study, Cynthia Christina Ontiveros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This qualitative research is a transcendental phenomenology seeking to understand Latin@ high school students’ perceptions and standpoints as they participated lessons that addressed border environmental justice issues in an underrepresented, marginalized community. Seven students from Borderland High School, enrolled in a senior level course, Environmental Science, participated in the study which focused on their experiences in an environmental justice air quality thematic unit built around the complex issues surrounding a local refinery, American Smelting and Refining Company (ASARCO). The study analyzed the meaning students made and their standpoints regarding the impact of the factory and its one-hundred year history polluting …

Engaging In Social Justice With Toddlers, Susan M. Nasiombe

Capstone Collection

This study was created as a way to highlight and begin filling a large void in academic information regarding the ways caregivers engage in social justice with the toddlers they care for. Through an online survey, participants were asked to explain their role and experience as caregivers, give their definition of social justice, share the social justice resources they use to help inform their engagement with toddlers, and list the limitations and barriers they face in achieving their goals in this area. Participants were also asked to assess their value of various elements commonly used to engage toddlers in social …

Canon Formation In The Study Of The Environment In China And Taiwan, Peter I-Min Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Canon Formation in the Study of the Environment in China and Taiwan" Peter I-min Huang discusses how the canon of ecocriticism taught in English studies in China and Taiwan is becoming increasingly of a local perspective by scholars who publish in Mandarin, address environmental issues specific to Mainland China and Taiwan, and thus engage with ecocriticism based on local perspectives rather than Western ones. The study and teaching of English-language literature in China and Taiwan inevitably encounters charges of neocolonialism or other argumentation that it is being used in ways that betray the legacy of past colonialist …

Introduction To Western Canons In A Changing East Asia, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

The Native American Organic Garden: Using Service Learning As A Site Of Resistance To The Boarding School Tradition, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

As educators, we owe it to our students to enable them to transgress structural impediments and to create sustainable alternatives from the margins of the industrial agro-food system. Policies of assimilation, allotment, and enclosure of the Native American commons and ecosystems brought devastation to Native cultures. Dependence on government commodities replaced Native food sovereignty and contributed to malnutrition, obesity, and diabetes as diets responded to corporately produced and processed foods. Young people often feel disempowered and ask how they might confront such formidable forces as corporate control of our agro-food system, destruction of natural resources, and threats to human health. …

Rediscovering Local Environmentalism In Taiwan, Peter I-Min Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Rediscovering Local Environmentalism in Taiwan" Peter I-min Huang challenges the domination of "the global" and the marginalization of "the local." Huang argues that by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century globalism seemed to have toppled localism in ecocriticism debates. Ecocritics embraced enthusiastically such concepts as Ursula K. Heise's "eco-cosmopolitanism" and the arguments associated with it that spoke for global forms of environmental thinking and practice. Yet, arguments for "the local" persist in part because of Heise's constructive criticisms of it. Focusing on local environmental movements in Taiwan, Huang identifies and discusses scholarly work …

The Systemic Approach, Biosemiotic Theory, And Ecocide In Australia, Iris Ralph

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Systemic Approach, Biosemiotic Theory, and Ecocide in Australia" Iris Ralph summarizes an argument in defense of disciplinarity ("openness from closure") that Cary Wolfe makes in What is Posthumanism? She also comments on an implicit argument that Wendy Wheeler makes in The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture. As Ralph argues, Wheeler's implicit claim is that biosemiotic language, which humans share with other biological beings, connects human animals and nonhuman animals on moral and affective grounds. Ralph summarizes Wolfe's defense of disciplinarity that literary and cultural studies scholars who engage with the "question …

Faculty Research Interest Database, David Owerbach

Office of Research Institutional Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Transforming Public Education: The Need For An Educational Justice Movement, Mark R. Warren

New England Journal of Public Policy

Nearly fifteen years after the passage of No Child Left Behind, the failures of our educational system with regard to low-income children of color remain profound. Traditional reform efforts have sought improvements solely within the confines of the school system, failing to realize how deeply educational failure is part of and linked to broader structures of poverty and racism. A social movement that creates political and cultural change is necessary to transform the racial inequities in public education itself and to connect this transformational effort to a larger movement to combat poverty and racism. The seeds of a new educational …

A Local Exploration Of Educators’ Perceptions, Collaboration And Usage Of Natural Sites In Introducing The Outdoors To Marginalized Students, Todd Beasley

Theses and Dissertations

A recent trend in social science research has focused on factors that lead to low participation rates by racial groups, specifically the African American population, within outdoor and wilderness settings as a connection to the issue of low participation rates by these same groups in outdoor and environmental careers. Much of the research has relied upon theories that address the marginalization of the African American population in relation to the social context: marginality, subculture/ethnicity, discrimination, acculturation, and opportunity. However, an area of interest that warrants a deeper examination of potential contributing causality is the role of the educator.

The purpose …

Investigating Local Sustainable Environmental Perspectives Of Kenyan Community Members And Teachers, Cassie Quigley, James Dogbey, S Megan Che, Jeffrey Hallo

Publications

Efforts to conserve and preserve the environment in developing or marginalized locales frequently involve a one-way transfer of knowledge and materials from a source in a more developed location. This situation often degenerates into a short-term donor project which risks little to no long-term impacts on local or indigenous relationships with the environment. This research study with educators in Narok, Kenya investigates the current perspectives of local key stakeholders on the environment and sustainability with the purpose of sharing these understandings among local groups to generate a locally constructed meaning of environmental conservation and sustainability. It is the researchers’ aim …

Resources, Coalition For Education In The Outdoors

Taproot: A Journal of Outdoor Education

This section lists teaching resources of all types for those who work in outdoor education at the time of publication. Some highlighted items include:

Eco-Warriors: Updated Edition

Rise of the Eco-Warriors: Film Review