The Environmental Class
The goal of this class is to escort the engaging student through a unique path connecting popular environmental myths with actual clean-up projects from a corporate chemistry perspective. This course continues the discussion which began in Pacific Seminar I, where the importance of human's interaction with their natural world was explored. Everyone has heard the environmental rhetoric, but what does it really mean to each of us and how is it connected to what has occurred in the past and our future. Specific, contextual examples will be explored including connections between Henry David Thoreau's Walden to contemporary novelist Carl Hiaasen and his book Team Rodent. Learners will overlay these literary connections with actual environmental contamination projects worked on by the instructor, while he was employed as a consulting chemist. One concrete example of this interaction will be a role play of students addressing environmental chemistry concepts behaving as chemists, hydrologists, engineers in a clean-up simulation.
This class encourages students to make connections between society, education outside of the classroom and their natural world. The primary method for discovery will be the science process skills, where students will research, propose, design, and troubleshoot their own environmental stewardship models. Topics include groundwater flow models, sampling and analysis, chemical and biological data interpretation as well as contaminant remediation designs. Along with connections to Pacific Seminar I readings on our natural world, assignments will include formal and informal writing and presentations, as well as a critical thinking activity and project-based learning. There are no tests given in this course.
