2015 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

The Environmental Leadership Program (ELP), housed in Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, is a service-learning program that provides students an opportunity to apply classroom knowledge and skills to address local environmental issues. We focus on professional, leadership, communication and collaboration skills. Undergraduate students work directly with graduate students, local residents, agencies, non-profit organizations, and businesses to gain applied skills. During the 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years, we offered the year-long MyMcKenzie Learning Initiative, which involved developing a set of interdisciplinary and complementary courses and service-learning projects focused on our local watershed. In this panel we will describe how we used our watershed as a framework to integrate the natural sciences, social sciences and environmental humanities to cultivate a strong sense of place and a deep commitment to stewardship and civic engagement. We will share lessons learned regarding project design and implementation, academic rigor and reflection, and quality control.  We will explore how service-learning can provide students with practical field and writing skills, an introduction to restoration knowledge, and experience working collaboratively in a team-based setting, while also providing useful products to our community partners. We will share how we approached integrating environmental humanities and service-learning, and we’ll share lessons we’ve learned in implementing collaborative, community-based environmental education projects, including project development strategies, structure of teams, funding mechanisms, evaluation tools and learning outcomes.

Kathryn A. Lynch

Environmental Leadership Program, University of Oregon

klynch@uoregon.edu

The MyMcKenzie Learning Initiative

The University of Oregon’s Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) is a service-learning program that provides students an opportunity to apply classroom knowledge and skills to address local environmental issues. We focus on professional, leadership, communication and collaboration skills. Undergraduate students work directly with graduate students, local residents, agencies, non-profit organizations, and businesses to gain applied skills. During the 2012-13 and 2013-14 academic years, we offered the year-long MyMcKenzie Learning Initiative, which involved developing a set of interdisciplinary and complementary courses and service-learning projects focused on our local watershed. As part of this initiative, we created a new interdisciplinary course, Understanding Place: the McKenzie Watershed, which served as the foundational course for the year. This class created an opportunity for students to develop a sense of place (which was an end goal in itself) but also prepared them for their spring service-learning projects. The course incorporated six field trips that took us from the headwaters to the confluence, where we explored lava flows, springs, dams, hatcheries, restoration projects, historical sites and more to gain insights regarding ecological and human communities. Through guest speakers, we heard various perspectives on Indigenous and Euro-American cultures, socio-economic issues, water quality and use, dam management, salmon restoration and land use. We contemplated what contributes to a sense of place, and how it influences people’s worldviews and choices. By design, this course was interdisciplinary: we applied multiple perspectives from the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities to gain a deeper understanding of the McKenzie. Although we focused on a single watershed, we learned about complex issues – salmon, water, rural economies – that ripple throughout the Pacific Northwest. In this introductory presentation, we will describe how we organized the 3-course community-based framework as well as specific details on the Understanding Place course.

Peg Boulay

Environmental Leadership Program, University of Oregon

boulay@uoregon.edu

MyMcKenzie: Stream Stewardship Projects 

Within the MyMcKenzie Initiative, we supervised five natural science teams focused on restoration planning and monitoring. Our community partners were the McKenzie Watershed Council, U.S. Forest Service, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, McKenzie River Trust and Whitewater Ranch. The Stream Stewardship Teams (2013, 2014) surveyed for and controlled invasive plants, monitored riparian plantings, measured stream channel morphology, conducted fish surveys, characterized vegetative communities, planned a 5-acre restoration project, and wrote a detailed grant proposal. The River Restoration Team (2014) collected inventory data and made management recommendations to inform a future floodplain restoration planning process. The students surveyed fish, amphibian and invertebrate populations using a variety of methods. They also used Global Positioning System units and aerial photos to created detailed maps of side channel and levee locations. This team had the remarkable opportunity to work side-by-side with 6 professionals (4 biologists, 1 hydrologist and 1 geologist). The Sustainable Farms Team (2014) created a management plan for a degraded creek located on a private ranch. The students conducted an historic analysis and site assessment; interviewed the landowner and land manager; collected baseline data on soils, vegetation, stream channel morphology, and fish populations; evaluated opportunities and constraints; and planned conceptual restoration activities. In this presentation, I will share lessons learned regarding successful project design and implementation, academic rigor and reflection, and quality control. I will describe how service-learning can provide students with practical field and writing skills, an introduction to restoration knowledge, and experience working collaboratively in a team-based setting, while also providing useful products to our community partner.

Aylie Baker

Environmental Leadership Program, University of Oregon

aylieb@uoregon.edu

MyMcKenzie: River Stories Projects

Within the MyMcKenzie Initiative, we developed two service-learning projects called “River Stories” that integrated photography, video, and oral histories. The River Stories Teams (2013, 2014) worked in collaboration with the McKenzie River Drift Boat Museum to document and archive the cultural history of the McKenzie River. The teams explored questions of how the stories we tell about a place impact the way we feel about it and the way we take care of it, and how stories bring us into community with others. Using video and photography, they captured the experiences and insights of river guides, boat builders, fishermen and women, conservation advocates and others, with the goal of preserving this unique heritage for future generations and promoting stewardship of the river. Our goal was for students to become critical media consumers and critical media makers – to really grapple with how the stories we hear and tell influence the larger, lived stories of communities on the ground. With a foundation in media gathering and production, students set out to capture the world around them, and returning to the classroom were tasked with the challenge of representing that complex and tangled world in a way that reaches others. This act of “world-making” exposes students to different knowledges and ways of seeing a shared world. The act of sharing stories locally, in their place of origin, challenges students to present stories in a way that both honors the tellers and sheds light on those diverse, and not always aligning, perspectives that together expand our ideas of what is possible and important in our communities. In this discussion we will share how we approached integrating environmental humanities and service-learning, and we’ll share lessons learned regarding developing and implementing these types of learning opportunities.

Jenny Crayne

Environmental Leadership Program, University of Oregon

jcrayne@uoregon.edu

MyMcKenzie: Environmental Education Projects 

Within the MyMcKenzie Initiative, we created three different service-learning projects that focused on providing high-quality environmental education (EE) programs for local youth that strengthen their connection to the place they live, and inspire stewardship of the McKenzie River. The Critters & Currents Team (2014) worked with students at Adams Elementary, focusing on the McKenzie River and its importance as our sole source of drinking water. Ten undergraduates developed and implemented this place-based curriculum that emphasized empathy for and awareness of the McKenzie River with the intention of motivating students to become involved in the stewardship of the river. The curriculum included classroom visits and field trips for the entire school. The X-Stream Team (2013) also developed an experiential, place-based curriculum for Adams Elementary that focused on the McKenzie watershed. A series of hands-on, interactive classroom lessons and field trips to the McKenzie River provided the children an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of where they live, and the importance of conservation and stewardship. Field trips included stewardship activities, such as mulching 300 planted trees, in collaboration with the McKenzie River Trust. The Canopy Connections Team (2013) collaborated with the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest and Pacific Tree Climbing Institute, to develop and facilitate a unique field trip experience -- one that gave middle-schoolers an opportunity to climb into the canopy of an old-growth forest. The curriculum focused on forest ecology and watershed structure. Activities included learning to read topographic maps, building watershed models, treasure hunting for decomposers, and journaling, among others. This discussion will share lessons we’ve learned in implementing these collaborative, community-based environmental education projects, including project development strategies, structure of teams, funding mechanisms, evaluation tools and learning outcomes.