Looking For Connections
Many, perhaps most, of our pressing environmental management challenges today transcend state, regional and international boundaries. Sustainable solutions require multidisciplinary approaches, communication, coordination, and collaborations across a large number of stakeholder groups representing diverse views and perspectives. In the undergraduate program of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management (ESPM), our goal is to teach skills that enable our future environmental stewards to conceptualize and work effectively at large spatial scales to create solutions that are implementable in a globalized market place. As such, our program highly values study abroad experiences to broaden the breadth of learning available to our students, and we are committed to helping our students develop and achieve an international experience as part of their undergraduate training.
Our degree program is located in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and benefits from a variety of on-going and newly developed innovative pedagogical initiatives. The initiatives include well-established participation in the freshmen seminars program, retro-fitting traditional classrooms into technology enhanced classrooms, supporting short-term faculty-led study abroad seminars, and pro-active curricular planning to expand interdisciplinary teaching opportunities and imbed a high impact experiential learning experience (ELE) requirement into our degree programs (CFANS, 2011a, b)
With all of these opportunities it is useful, I think, to ask how we can create even more strategic and effective programs for the future? To me, part of the answer rests with simply connecting the dots and putting these pieces together in a way that makes maximum use of our existing resources. The conceptual framework that I am pulling together is based on the high impact ELE model of Kolb (1984), which includes an initial planning or “preflection” component, a discrete “execution” phase, and meaningful “reflective” period.
Overview Of The Pieces
During the past semester I have coordinated with our CFANS Freshman Seminar coordinator, the IPFANS Office, and the Learning Abroad Center to refine my concept for pulling the pieces together. To my surprise and delight, I learned during the initial discussions that a concept for combining a freshman seminar with a short-term study abroad was already nearing implementation for spring semester in 2013 (for details see: http://umabroad.umn.edu/programs/fsa.php). Offered for three credits, this program will consist of one-half semesters of freshmen seminars on a range of differing topics, followed by a study abroad component during spring break, and most will be approved to fulfill a liberal education requirement.
My concept is similar in that it integrates a freshmen seminar with a study abroad component, but it differs in several key points, and is designed to serve the narrower ESPM program and strongly adhere to the experiential learning initiative in CFANS. Departures from the Learning Abroad Center model are: (1) the freshmen seminar will last the full spring semester and carry two credits; (2) the study abroad component will consist of a 15-20 day trip abroad, also for two credits, in May; and (3) there will be a service component (ie., not for credit) to be completed either in late summer or during the following fall semester. Structured this way, the program will unfold over an eight to ten month time frame, with activity (1) fulfilling the preflection component, activity (2) the execution phase, and activity (3) being the meaningful reflective period.
Pulling Together The Pieces
Students may enroll for the Freshmen Seminar without committing to the study abroad and earn two credits (however, priority will be given to students that verbally commit to the study abroad). Students not completing the freshman seminar but desiring to participate in the study abroad can be placed on a space-available waiting list, and earn two credits if openings in the study abroad component materialize. This will provide some flexibility to accommodate student schedules if they cannot arrange both the freshman seminar and the study abroad. Students in the ESPM program will be given priority to participate, but students from other colleges across the university can enroll on a space-available basis. However, to fulfill the high impact ELE requirement the ESPM students will be required to complete all three activities.
This program will be marketed via recruiting opportunities to potential high school students during on-campus visits, and during the annual Dean’s Welcome for admitted and committed incoming freshmen. Additional marketing will occur during College Day of Welcome Week, and also during Fall Semester in the ESPM 1001 Freshmen Orientation Seminar. The concept is to integrate the service requirement into these last two marketing efforts so that students that are rising sophomores and have completed the freshman seminar and study abroad will provide the marketing to the current incoming freshmen class of a given year through presentations and small-group interactions. In addition, we will attempt to develop a “Study Abroad Ambassadors” program for returning students that want a more formalized reflective experience.
We will use a technology enhanced classroom such as 50A Coffey Hall so that every student will have access to the internet during each class period. We will use Moodle for posting readings, interactive activities, submitting homework assignments and blogs. In addition, we will use social media (Facebook, Facetime and/or Skype) to facilitate real-time discussions with students studying Environmental Sciences in our target country. Our initial target country will be Iceland, however in subsequent years the target countries and environmental topics will vary at the discretion of the faculty leading the seminar. Because of time zone differences, our class meeting time will be from 8-10 AM on Saturday mornings. The intent of integrating social media into the seminar will be to allow the freshmen to independently develop questions and explore concepts that are introduced in class with undergraduates studying environmental sciences in Iceland. The freshmen will be required to develop their own social networks with Icelanders to better understand how landscapes and natural resources influence opinions about managing environmental resources. Efforts will be made to coordinate follow-up meetings with persons met through social media during our study abroad visit to Iceland.
Figure 1: Lake at Reykjarfirði (left) and highlands and alpine stream at Hengladals (right). Examples of natural resources managed for sustainable fishing and hiking activities. (Both photographs provided by Elísabet Ragna Hannesdóttir.)
Integrating the social networks component into the seminar is expected to substantively enhance the learning abroad experience. During the freshman seminar we will focus some of our learning activities on policies that differ between the United States and our destination country, with the intent of trying to understand how the differing policies serve the conservation of similar resources. However, rather than relying fully on readings and our own experiences for contextualizing the information about conservation of particular natural resources, we will be able to hear “first hand” the impressions and judgments of environmentally oriented students in Iceland of their national approaches to stewarding their natural resources. For instance, I will use one example related to differing management approaches related to aquatic resources to illustrate. In Minnesota, most of our management of fishing in state parks and national parks is for recreational sport fishing. I expect that most students in our class that are Minnesota residents may consider sport fishing for walleye that occurs in our parks as a valuable leisure-time resource. By contrast, students from other states may not fully appreciate the social and leisure-time attitudes that have formed the foundation for our complex and lake-dependent rules regarding catch-limits and slot-sizes that govern if an angler can retain a caught walleye for personal consumption. This difference in perspective provides an example of potentially contrasting and even controversial opinions regarding managing the yield of walleye in our lakes over the past several decades.
By contrast, however, in Iceland there is a commercial fishing industry in some lakes of national parks, such as Thingvallavatn, with detailed records of fisheries yields for more than three centuries. This lake is located in Thingvellir, which was proclaimed a national park and national shrine in 1928, and more recently has been the focus of a comprehensive assessment of the local geology, meteorology and natural resources. Although managed as a national park, it continues to support a sustainable commercial fishery. By integrating Icelandic students into our seminar we can potentially expand our discussion of fishing regulations to include the Icelanders’ views on commercial fishing for arctic char in their national park. What differing attitudes and value systems develop around managing yield of freshwater fish when it is leisure-based versus income-dependent? How do these differences translate into attitudes and, ultimately, regulations and rules for conserving sustainable yields? The social networking will provide us with perspective that we cannot provide in a closed classroom discussion. This will be followed up with a visit to the national park, where we can talk with park managers in more detail and learn about internship opportunities for students to be involved in the commercial fishing industry. Thus the digital technology will give us an opportunity to make these connections prior to the trip, and form a context that will enrich or otherwise enhance the experience when they actually set foot in the country.
Sustaining This Program Over Time
In ESPM we introduce and emphasize the concept of environmentally sustainable resource management, and a program of experiential learning for ESPM majors should, likewise, have a plan for longer-term sustainability. By integrating this program into our recruitment activities, re-visiting it in the Freshmen Orientation seminars, and coordinating the service component so the sophomores completing the experience have the opportunities to describe their experiences to the subsequent freshmen classes, I expect that we can continue to generate sufficient student enthusiasm to maintain enrollments over time. From the perspective of faculty involvement, this framework will be flexible enough to allow interested faculty to select destination countries and environmental topics that are “real-world” and contemporary in content and importance, and can align with teaching and research aspirations of contributing faculty.
References
CFANS, 2011a. Pathways to Discovery Initiative Policy.
CFANS 2011b. Experiential Goals and Guidelines Statement approved at the meeting of the Undergraduate Policy Review Committee, 16 December 2011.
Kolb, D. A. (1984) Experiential Learning, Prentice Hall Publishers Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 256 pp.