ESTD 3850 - Campus Sustainability

Goals: Students focus on problem-based, community-engaged action research projects around sustainability topics, such as: campus waste and nutrient flows and energy and transportation systems, and the development of outdoor classroom spaces, programming, and research (for example at the stormwater pond at the Pierce Butler and Snelling intersection, and at the Hamline Learning Lawn).

This course also helps prepare students to work in the Sustainability Resource Center and/or to connect internship activities with academic approaches to knowledge and community engagement, sharing different ways to explore environments and share the resulting observations with communities who would be interested. If you are planning an internship or community-engaged research project, or if you’d like to think about how to build your resume and academic record by connecting your interests and your internship activities, consider how to connect your interests to the course projects in ways that will be helpful for you!

Content: Conducting research is a major function of many colleges and universities. By researching sustainability issues, higher education institutions can continue to help the world understand sustainability challenges and develop new technologies, strategies, and approaches to address those challenges. As individuals and groups, we can use sustainability research to learn what’s happening in the world around us, and to assess how our interventions are working. College campuses provide wonderful real-world classrooms for actively exploring how to measure and improve the sustainability of the various processes that support our everyday lives. Students that actively participate in making their campuses more sustainable are well prepared to continue that work in their careers and communities after graduation. In this course, students learn how to frame, develop, and explore environmental questions, conducting on-campus group research projects and field-trip based field study.

Taught: Spring

Prerequisite: ESTD 1100 or ESTD 1500

Note: This course may be repeated and can also be taken as ESTD 1850 for 2 credits. Students may earn up to 8 credits across ESTD 1850 and 3850.

Credits: 4

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