Organic Chemistry: Friend or Foe? An Organic Chemistry Special Investigation
Neal A. Yakelis, Pacific Lutheran University
Students are asked to work in teams to find a claim in the media relating to the impact of an organic compound (or class of organic compounds) on the environment and its inhabitants. Their chosen compound should have an effect on the sustainability of plant or animal life, or, in particular, the sustainability of human health.

How Many Plants Make a Future? The Carbon Dioxide Challenge
Rus Higley, Highline Community College Marine Science and Technology Center, Vanessa Hunt and Timothy Sorey, Central Washington University
This activity focuses on the role of photosynthesis in a sustainable future. Students explore the effect of photosynthesis and respiration in a 'closed systems' containing plankton, marine plants, and fish. By calculating carbon dioxide uptake and production in these systems, they predict a plant: animal ratio sufficient to maintain a system in carbon dioxide 'balance' for one hour.

Plant People
Rob Efird, Seattle University
This integrated outdoor-learning, research and reflection exercise gives students a first-hand familiarity with local native plants and their significance in local native societies.

Building Sustainable Communities, But What Kind?
Hannah Love, Pacific Lutheran University
This assignment, depending on the level and depth of implementation, seeks to challenge students by asking them to look beyond "greenwashed" advertisements and buzzwords to grapple with what sustainability means, whether it can be achieved, and what kinds of questions communities must confront in a search for sustainability.

Bioregion Assignment
Claus Svendsen, Skagit Valley College
A weekly bioregion homework assignment exploring for the student local landscape changes. What were the past natural conditions and native uses to todays uses, as well as projected changes in the coming decades.

Assessing Local Sea Level Rise
Ken Tabbutt, The Evergreen State College
Students will read primary scientific literature, work collaboratively, think critically, and utilize GIS as a tool to visualize and quantify spatial and temporal changes in hydrological systems.

State of Your Own Backyard
Ardi Kveven, Ocean Research College Academy at Everett Community College
Students evaluate water quality data as indicators of the health of an ecosystem and manage, graph and analyze data from an online database. This activity is designed to facilitate student interest in their ecosystem, focusing on where they live.

Ethnographic Methods for Community Visioning
Karen Gaul, The Evergreen State College
This project involves students in substantial community-based ethnographic research. Working cooperatively together as a consultancy team, the students learn to use ethnographic and other research methods. They also learn to empower and give voice to various stakeholders and to assemble and synthesize data for a formal report.

Exploring Personal Footprints
Bev Farb, Everett Community College
Students apply the main research methods in sociology to explore their personal footprints (i.e., the global consequences of their individual actions).

Your Environmental Impact
Eric Baer and Mayra Hernandez, Highline Community College
The following homework assignments are designed to build understanding of personal water use, sewage, waste generation and disposal, pollution sources and impacts, and energy use and costs.