Courting Environmental Justice: Science, Community Knowledge and Public Health
Lin Nelson, The Evergreen State College
While this module was developed when we followed the federal criminal case around WR Grace and asbestos exposure in a small Montana mining town, it can be adapted for a range of learning experiences regarding environmental justice, argumentation, strategizing, remediation and sustainability.

Water and Civic Responsibility: An Online Discussion Exercise
Rob Viens, Bellevue Community College
Students apply their science learning to regional issues related to water quantity and quality.

Unit 5: Linking Processes Driven By Internal and External Energy Sources
Susan DeBari, Western Washington University
Students use what they have learned in the previous units to link the above-ground part of the rock cycle (driven by the hydrologic cycle, energy from the Sun, and gravity) to the below-ground part of the rock ...

A River Runs Through It: an exploration in land use and water resource management
Robin Humphreys, College of Charleston
This is an in-class activity where students learn about the interconnectedness of land use, water quality, and water resource management. Students are assigned a river front parcel of land to develop, unaware that ...

Introduction to Scientific Journals
Avery Shinneman, University of Washington-Bothell Campus
In this activity, students are introduced to locating and reading peer-reviewed scientific journal articles. It helps ease students into the process of locating, reading, and using journal publications. This ...

Unit 6: Regional Case Study Community Action Plans
Rebecca Boger, Brooklyn College, CUNY; Amy Potter, Armstrong State University; Russanne Low, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies
Unit 6 provides an opportunity for students to present their action plans and exchange knowledge about what they have learned in their team case study work. This unit builds on food security and Earth system ...

Rebecca Boger: Using Food Security in Introduction to Urban Sustainability at CUNY Brooklyn College
Rebecca Boger, Brooklyn College, CUNY
My course is an introduction to urban sustainability that integrates materials from environmental science, sociology and economics. As a relatively new course, I have been learning about what works or doesn't work each time I teach it. From the onset, the course was designed around two-week units pertaining to sustainability topics (e.g., water, transportation, housing). A few years ago, I took a Team Based Learning (TBL) workshop. While the course structure doesn't totally fit within the TBL design, I do apply many of the elements, such as having students work in teams throughout the semester, giving quizzes at the beginning of each unit so that students do the reading and come prepared to learn more deeply about a subject, and more application activities and fewer lectures. One of the course units is food and so the food security module was a perfect fit for the course, both in content and structure.

Unit 6: Systems Thinking Synthesis
Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College; deborah gross, Carleton College; Karl Kreutz, University of Maine
This in-class exercise is an alternative to standard review sessions and models the systems thinking students need to do when working on complex, interdisciplinary issues. Students quiz each other on course ...

Natural Hazards & Climate Change Risks
Sarah Fortner, Carleton College
× Students characterize how climate change impacts natural hazards and pose research-based solutions to the county Emergency Management Agency. Presentations require the use of local data, created figures, ...

Soils —Field Characterization, Collection, and Laboratory Analysis
Abir Biswas, The Evergreen State College
Field characterization of soil profiles in coniferous and deciduous settings; sample collection of soils from different horizons; laboratory analysis of soil moisture, soil organic carbon (by loss on ignition), and ...