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Course and Module Proposers Seeking Team Members

The following individuals are interested in submitting a proposal for one of the InTeGrate calls for proposals and are seeking additional team members. While you are not required to assemble a team ahead of time, we are making it possible for people to share their ideas more broadly and connect with others interested in the same topic. Please contact the individuals below directly if you are interested in their topic and would like to be part of a multi-institution team to develop new curricular materials for InTeGrate.

Currently, there are two calls for authors (proposals due July 15):

Jump down to ideas for modules or courses in: Geoscience, Engineering, Sustainability | Humanities or Social Science Frame to Teach about the Earth | Winter 2013/2014 proposals

July 2013 Ideas for the Current Module and Course Call for Proposals

Ideas that Bring Together Geoscience, Engineering, and Sustainability

Ideas that use a Humanities or Social Science Frame to Teach About the Earth

Want to add your idea to this list?

If you'd like to add your idea to this list to help you find other module authors, please email the appropriate team leader:

Winter 2013/2014 Ideas- Upcoming call will be available Fall 2013

Geoscientific Thinking, Societal Issues, or Teacher Preparation

Understanding urban sustainability through historical aerial photographs

I propose to use Google Earth's ability to display high-resolution image overlays as a way to engage students - particularly those in urban environments - in exploring historical landscape change in cities and at the rural-urban interface. Ecological and geomorphic information from this exercise would feed into broader assessments of sustainable development.

Peter A. Selkin
Assistant Professor, Environmental Geophysics
Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Tacoma
paselkin AT u.washington.edu

Sustainable agriculture as a context for developing earth systems thinking

I am a teacher educator in a college of agriculture and life sciences and see a real need for students in agriculture to develop an appreciation for the complexity of earth systems and how human practices impact these systems. I plan to develop a module for an existing course on ecological agriculture, but I am also interested in developing other stand-alone modules that would be useful in a variety of courses.

Hannah H Scherer
Agricultural and Extension Education
Virginia Tech
hscherer AT vt.edu

Social and Natural Resource Systems

Social systems, such as economic systems, exist within natural systems which place limits on what is possible. For instance, the laws of thermodynamics are not subject to repeal. Similarly, the social systems of humans affect the use of natural resources and these social systems are subject to their own limitations. The laws of supply and demand also are not subject to repeal. Social interaction through market exchanges is an important and efficient way in which humans deal with the problem of scarcity of resources, human, manmade and natural, both at any point in time and over time, across generations. Similarly, political systems exist which affect the rules by which exchanges take place.

I envision this to really be two modules: One for courses taught where an introductory economics course is a pre-requisite, and another where it is not.

The successful student should be able to:

  • explain why scarcity, or the conflict between limited resources and unlimited human wants, as well as how societies coordinate resources forms the setting for all economic decisions.
  • describe how markets work and fail to work in allocating resources efficiently, and, if given enough time, how democratic action works to allocate resources over uses and across time.
  • explain the role of social institutions, especially property rights and markets, in determining how prices in markets allocate resources, whether natural (both renewable and non-renewable), human or man-made, across competing uses both now and across time over generations, affecting resource sustainability.
  • appreciate the social dimension in addition to the scientific and engineering dimensions of the problems of pollution, resource depletion and wildlife protection.

Morris Coats
Professor of Economics
Nicholls State University
morris.coats AT nicholls.edu

The Ethics and Justice of Sustainability

This module would discuss the problem of sustainability as a violation of fairness across generations. Fairness here is discussed in terms of the fairness of the result and fairness of the process. Three criteria for sustainability are discussed, "weak sustainability," "strong sustainability" and "environmental sustainability." Weak sustainability requires that as much of the natural wealth plus man-made wealth be available for future generations as is available to the present generation. That is, the total of natural and man-made wealth should not decline over time. Strong sustainability requires that neither the total of natural wealth nor the total of man-made wealth decline over time. Strong sustainability suggests that natural and man-made wealth may not be perfect substitutes and that man-made wealth may not be able to compensate future generations for a degraded environment. Environmental sustainability suggests that different forms of natural wealth may not be good substitutes and seeks to assure non-declining stocks of all types of environmental and natural resources. Difficulties meeting these various criteria will be discussed.

Morris Coats
Professor of Economics
Nicholls State University
morris.coats AT nicholls.edu

Introductory Geoscience and Environmental Science

Energy and Sustainability for the Next Generation

Module materials should examine the factors that will influence future decisions about energy use and how those choices may affect the Earth system.

Many predictions of "running out" of particular resources, especially energy resources, are based on projections of current use out into the future without regard for how current and projected future scarcities affects prices and prices affect both resource use as well as the incentive to innovate. If a resource is more valued in one region than another, the profit incentive of sellers and the economizing incentive of buyers lead to movement of the resource from lower to higher valued region. Similarly, if people expect increased future scarcity of that resource, increases in the expected or future price of the resource will lead people to economize on current use, saving the resource for future uses, where the price is expected to be higher. This "arbitrage" across time, also known as speculation, is bemoaned yet is responsible for forestalling the "running out" problem.

The successful student should be able to:

  • explain why energy resources are scarce and why fossil fuels are not sustainable.
  • define entropy.
  • explain how mined materials are also subject to the entropy problem.
  • define speculation and arbitrage.
  • discuss the role of speculation in rationing the use of scarce energy resources, especially fossil fuels, across generations.
  • discuss how prices generated through market activity, in the face of increasing scarcity of a particular fossil fuel, leads to transitions between major fuels over time, and a transition to increasing reliance on sustainable, solar-based energy resources.
  • discuss the role of social institutions, especially property-rights institutions (social rules) and the enforcement of property rights, play in determining whether or not people act responsibly in their use of resources, as users may or may not face full costs of their decisions.
  • discuss how fossil fuel (carbon) use that does not take into account climate-change costs leads to over-use of carbon and how a carbon tax makes users begin to take these costs into account. With enough time, cap-and-trade alternatives to carbon taxation could also be discussed.

Morris Coats
Professor of Economics
Nicholls State University
morris.coats AT nicholls.edu

Want to add your idea to this list?

If you'd like to add your idea to this list to help you find other module authors, please email the appropriate team leader:

  • Introductory Geoscience and Environmental Science Modules - David McConnell (damcconn AT ncsu.edu)
  • Geoscientific Thinking or Teacher Preparation Modules or Courses - Anne Egger (annegger AT geology.cwu.edu)
  • Societal Issues Modules or Courses - Cathryn Manduca (cmanduca at carleton.edu)


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