Integrating EE into Higher Ed Case Study

Blog

Integrating EE into Higher Ed Case Study

I am starting a blog about how I have incorporated EE into higher education classes.  I have created a new course that has features of EE in it.  The course is called Climate, Resources and Society.  This course discusses how humans affect climage change and how this change impacts local resource availability.  The class studied how interrelationships between humans, natural resources and culture determine how humans act on climate change.  We used the new Project Learning Tree module:  Southeastern Forests and Climate Change to do some exercises to increase awareness of climate.  The first day of class we used the activity of comparing science and policy and discussing how these two relate and why it took time for policies to be developed.  Students later in the semester measure diameter at breast height (DBH) in a highly populated tree area on campus to understand how the type and width of the tree can affect the amount of carbon stored.  Students spent a day learning about environmental justice and how issues of climate change often affect a disproportionately high number of minority and low income people by reading "Facing the Climate Gap: How Environmental Justice Communities are Leading the Way to a More Sustainable and Equitable California".  Another day students discussed Yale's "Global Warming's Six Americas 2009:  An Audience Segmentation Analysis" by splitting up different subtopics within the document and doing a round robin to discuss it.  The final project was a Public Service Announcement (PSA) involving climate change and a specific audience.  Students created videos, billboards, games, and children's books.  We were able to team teach the course so that everyone's strength can be part of the class.  The other professor teaches environmental science classes so she taught some of the factual information about climate change. 

 

I would like to invite other people to discuss courses where they incorporate EE into university classes too.