2018 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

Since its 2017 launch, the EcoTypes initiative (ds.lclark.edu/ecotypes/) has involved over 1000 student submissions from 30 institutions of U.S. higher education. It has conveyed detailed attitudinal information about environmental undergraduates, provided students opportunities to reflect on and compare their fundamental environmental ideas, and led to related surveys and discussions regarding practical applications. This session features a series of four presentations providing a background and update on EcoTypes, and exploring possible connections between EcoTypes (and related surveys), inclusion across difference, and environmental engagement. Presentations will mix data analysis, teaching pedagogy, and implications for our current political climate. One challenge presenters will discuss involves the relative homogeneity of environmental undergraduates, with important potential implications for broadening the circle of their conversations via greater inclusion, and how these skills of conversation across difference can be cultivated via environmental engagement. EcoTypes and related efforts thus provide a set of overlapping intellectual and practical benefits to the environmental studies & sciences community.