2018 Conference

Discussion Symposium

One of the challenges of an interdisciplinary field such as Environmental Science/Studies (ENVS) is that the curriculum can be scattered. ENVS curricula usually include courses from disparate disciplines, for example climate and economics, but sometimes lack a senior year synthesis, or a “culminating experience,” that ensures that students are integrating ideas across disciplines. For those curricula that have some sort of culminating experience, they are often not as effective as the faculty would like, due to a variety of reasons, for example, limitations in faculty time to advise individual student projects. The goal of this symposium is two-fold: first, it is to compile a list of short descriptions of the benefits and drawbacks of various culminating experiences; and second, it is to identify and evaluate the important attributes unique to each institution (for example the structure of curricula, number of faculty and teaching loads, numbers of majors) that would make one type of culminating experience more effective than another. To accomplish these goals, the discussants identified above, who all hail from separate liberal arts colleges with unique culminating experiences, will be asked to provide basic background data on their institution and ENVS program. The discussants will then be asked a series of questions about their program’s culminating experience. I will take notes during this session and will open for broader discussion with the audience when the discussants have finished.