Susan Caplow

Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Montevallo

About Me

I am, broadly speaking, an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist. I like to explore relationships between people and the environment, and how those relationships affect behavior. I also worked for several years in Environmental Education, so that's where my heart still lies in terms of research and advocacy. I also love travel and living abroad, I've worked or studied in Belize, Costa Rica, Hungary, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania, and I've visited another 25 countries or so.

I am originally from Minnesota, but have lived in the American South for many years now (North Carolina for 9 years, Alabama for 9). I live in Montevallo with my husband, 5 year old daughter, and a flock of chickens. I like to hike, read, play music, garden, and travel.

Focus of current FEW-Nexus-based education work

First, I use FEW-Nexus concepts already in my courses, but I am poised to take them further. As the primary architect of the Environmental Studies major at the University of Montevallo, I designed and teach the core courses in the Environmental Studies Program, and I employ an interdisciplinary perspective in all of my courses. In particular, I teach a core sustainability course in which food, water, and energy are all key topics, and I also use systems thinking as a core framework for the class. I touch on the FEW-Nexus conceptually there, but would love to be more intentional about incorporating this framework. I am very interested in helping to develop pedagogical resources around this area, as I see this as an important development in sustainability studies.

Second, I have done some pedagogical research in Environmental Studies, and am interested in the development of the field writ large. I have a forthcoming chapter in a sustainability competencies book about teaching systems thinking, I've written about my use of Ecotypes to articulate ideological differences in the classroom, and I'm part of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences Frameworks Project team (led by Jim Proctor at Lewis and Clark). The Frameworks Projects team is considering how theoretical frameworks are deployed and operationalized in Environmental Studies and Sciences courses, and how to help faculty make their use of frameworks more explicit and intentional. This work is in its early stages, and could readily dovetail with efforts to better define the FEW-Nexus framework to enhance undergraduate education across disciplines.

Third, my experience as an interdisciplinary environmental scholar can enrich the community and help bridge divides. I have three interdisciplinary environmental degrees (Public Policy/Biology, Environmental Science/Policy, and Ecology), and I manage an interdisciplinary academic program at UM. In my role coordinating faculty across campus, I frequently work across the silos to communicate ideas to diverse audiences and collaborate across difference. More intensively, I've also co-taught with faculty in studio art, literature, creative writing, and philosophy, and this fall I will be co-teaching with a faculty member in exercise science. Thus, while I have much to learn in the FEW-Nexus, I also have a lot to give in terms of interdisciplinary experience.

FEW-Nexus-based education experience, expertise and interests

I am particularly excited about this portion, as I would like to meet collaborators from other contexts to produce useful materials for myself and others. As a related experience, I participated in the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center's (SEYNC's) Teaching Socio-Environmental Case Studies workshop in 2013, and as part of that I connected with scholars from another institution to produce a case study for publication titled, "Community-Based Management and Conservation in Africa: Trade-offs and synergies in land-use decisions in local villages." We published this case with the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science at University at Buffalo, SUNY. I have not only used this case in my teaching, but I have also used other cases developed at that workshop in my teaching, and the workshop itself solidified my interest in case studies as a highly effective pedagogical tool.

I'm interested in all aspects of case study teaching and research, including the measurement of their effectiveness, the development of cases, and generating data with students as part of cases in action. In fact, the Environmental Studies capstone class at University of Montevallo is titled "Environmental Studies in Action," and the students in the course work with a real-life client to address a sustainability challenge – I'd love to think about local FEW-Nexus cases in which students could contribute data and insights toward the solving of local issues.

As for what I bring, I am an interdisciplinary social scientist, but have studied other disciplines and can communicate well with natural scientists in particular. In the case I created at SESYNC, my colleagues were physical geographers who brought expertise with remotely-sensed data and landscape analysis; I contributed knowledge about conservation and development at the village level based on fieldwork I had conducted in Tanzania as part of the Global Comparative Study on REDD+ (with the Center for International Forestry Research). I also have conducted research in environmental education, and am comfortable with both qualitative and quantitative social science data collection techniques. Thus, I am particularly interested in connecting with scholars from other disciplines in order to develop thorough and well-rounded FEW-Nexus case studies. I'd also like to connect with scholars from larger schools who may have access to larger data – as I am at a small teaching institution, I have stronger experience with the pedagogical side but do not publish as many original research papers as someone at an R1 or R2.