Afghan Poppies, Climate Change and War: Thinking Systemically About Us and Them
Karen Litfin, University of Washington-Seattle Campus
This contemplative practice inquires into the complex web of interdependencies linking global climate change, the War on Terror, Afghan poppy production, opiate addiction, and food security through the lens of systems theory. The exercise challenges students to consider these linkages not only conceptually but also somatically and emotionally.

The Impacts of Climate Change on x̌əpayac (Western Redcedar) and the Social Justice Implications for Indigenous Culture
Kristen Harrison, Tacoma Community College
Students use botany to explore how cedar trees are affected by climate change and the cultural importance of these trees to local indigenous peoples. As part of a field-based laboratory experience, students participate in a citizen science project that involves collecting data about cedar trees. The activity ends with a civic engagement experience designed and carried out by students to demonstrate how scientists can share their work with the public and with policymakers to address issues of concern to society.

Sacred Meals: Food, Community and Place in Indigenous Traditions
Suzanne Crawford O'Brien, Pacific Lutheran University
This assignment focuses on the importance of cultivating awareness of the interdependency of people and place. This core concept intersects with a central big idea of the course: how subsistence traditions maintain reciprocal relationships between human and ecological communities.

Interviewing the Past: Developing a Sense of Place through Oral Histories
Bob Abel, Olympic College
Local changes in climate, flora, fauna, and the human population can be anecdotally explored through interviews with long time locals.

Building a Public Knowledge Base: The Wikicadia Node Assignment
Todd Lundberg, Cascadia Community College
The center of this sequence of assignments is a collaborative, "New Media" writing project that involves publishing to a wiki a synthesis of knowledge about how humans inhabit places. Writers work in groups with others interested in a common sub-topic and develop information related to local places that local audiences who are invited to join the wiki may use.

Interconnectedness in The Upanishads and Upon Our Sheds
James Schneider, South Puget Sound Community College
In this workshop students gain understanding of the Hindu concept of monism and how it can be related to the sustainability concept of interconnectedness to classroom community as well as the natural environment on campus.

Maps and Legends: (Re)placing Composition
Jared Leising, Cascadia Community College
Because maps tell stories, offer perspectives, and make arguments, maps also act as a metaphor for the writing assignments students are given. The writing that students do in this class creates maps to where students have been (writing stories from memory), where they currently are (writing profiles from observations of places), and where they're headed. This course approaches sustainability from the viewpoint of learning to value the places in which we live through listening to and telling stories about those places.

Recognizing the Impact of Dominant Culture Privilege
Robin Jeffers, Bellevue Community College
This sequence of five assignments, starting with the study of texts, has students taking a look at the concept of dominant culture privilege and then moving them out into their own world to analyze what they're seeing there.

Indigenous Food Relationships: Sociological Impacts on the Coast Salish People
Ane Berrett, Nothwest Indian College
In this unit, students will analyze the macro level of societal influences which have interrupted micro level ecological relationship between plant and man. Sociological concepts such as sub culture, dominant culture, stages of historical change (Hunter Gatherer societies to Technological societies), stratification and poverty will be addressed through the sociological perspective. Students will experience solutions of sustainability which are interdependent with local place and people. Learning activities involve using the "citizen's argument," oral presentations, portfolio creation, written reflections and experiential service learning projects.

Native Plants, Native Peoples: Ethnobotany of the Puget Sound Bioregion
Liz Fortenbery, Tacoma Community College
Students gain a small glimpse into a native knowledge system and the relationship between people and plants, and thus begin to develop or strengthen their own relationship to native plants and the Puget Sound watershed.