Environmental Studies Community-Engaged Practicum (every semester)

Through this interdisciplinary capstone experience, our senior environmental studies majors collaborate with community organizations to lend their creativity, perspectives, and research skills to addressing current environmental issues in our region and beyond.

Middlebury Contact: Diane Munroe or Claire Tebbs (spring 2024)

Broadly speaking, we are interested in a range of topics as they apply to environmental studies.  We favor projects that integrate numerous disciplinary perspectives and methodologies and focus on translating knowledge or information across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

 

Students in the course will all have foundational environmental studies training as well as coursework relevant to their “focus” with the environmental studies major. These foci range across the social sciences, natural sciences, humanities, and the arts.  As senior majors, many will also be bringing relevant internship and work experience to these projects.

In addition to the learning goals of our Environmental Studies Program (http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/es/goals), specific goals for projects in this course are that they enable students to:

 

  • Critically engage with questions of justice and inequity;
  • Deepen their understanding of local, state, or regional environmental challenges, especially those related to environmental justice and environmental health disparities issues in Vermont;
  • Increase their comfort with and confidence in communicating environmental justice issues to a broad audience;
  •  Apply interdisciplinary thinking to their projects;
  • Develop visualization, interpretation, and reasoning skills in a spatial context;
  • Improve their ability to consider diverse perspectives and to listen to others; and
  • Strengthen their teamwork and project management skills

Community-based projects are the focus of this course and students will work on them for the entirety of our 12-week semester (mid-September to mid-December). Based on past experience, we will work collaboratively with community partners to design projects at a scope and scale appropriate to this full-semester timeline.

There are three required one-hour meetings that occur at regular intervals throughout the semester (beginning, midpoint, and near the end). You can expect that students will be in contact with you via an agreed upon mode with periodic questions in between these meetings.  Draft project documents will be shared with you for your review and feedback.  We also request that you share any relevant data or resources with students as appropriate.  Lastly, we typically work with partners to arrange for some form of final public presentation of their work.

Past projects have focused on a broad range of topics as they apply to environmental studies. Details of all past projects can be viewed here: https://www.middlebury.edu/college/academics/environmental-studies/community-engaged-practicum

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Published On: March 18, 2021

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