Application for MSoE Summer 2018 is live!

The Middlebury School of the Environment (MSoE) begins a new chapter in Summer 2018, moving its successful six-week, living and learning pedagogy in environmental problem solving and leadership from Middlebury’s campus in Vermont to Yunnan province, China. Yunnan boasts rich biodiversity, historical legacy, cultural diversity, pressing environmental issues and emerging environmental solutions and leadership.

The MSoE pedagogy is problem-based. In this six-week program, students work alongside faculty and practitioners to tackle significant environmental problems that stretch beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. This interdisciplinary approach is especially valuable considering the complexity of China’s environment. Our faculty represent fields as diverse as geology and chemistry, religious studies, geography, planning, filmmaking, and biodiversity conservation.

For students studying with MSoE in Yunnan, courses will occur in forests, wetlands and mountains; temples, kitchens, and homes; shops, alleys, and markets; laboratories, libraries and museums. Courses in the 2018 program include: Understanding Place, Sustainability Leadership Seminar, and Environmental Analysis.

Course Descriptions (students enroll in three, 300 level courses)

Understanding Place (3 credits)
Manifesting solutions to environmental challenges requires a deep understanding of “place,” by which we mean a sense of the history, culture, economy, and ecology of a location. Facing environmental challenges cannot be divorced from understanding either the people or the ecological realities of the location where the challenge is situated or from where the solution is to emerge. This is best understood by focusing first on a single place, and then examining that place in its global context. This course will explore a specific place through both ecological and cultural narratives (in other words, through geography, history, biology, literature, geology, and political science) to understand how this place came to be in the condition it is today; its global connections on multiple temporal and spatial scales; and how to improve conditions for both itself and the human communities associated with it.

Sustainability Leadership Seminar (3 credits)Governance and administration in China. Wicked problems. Sustainable communities. Spatial and systems thinking. Structured decision making. Persuasive communication. These are just a few of the topics this course will cover. Through a series of field-based exercises intended to hone your observational and analytical skills, and workshops from environmental leaders and practitioners based in the US and China, such as The Nature Conservancy, this course will enhance, amplify and elevate your sustainability leadership skills.

Environmental Analysis (3 credits)
Using a case study method, students in this course will use an interdisciplinary lens to explore critical environmental issues from both scientific and humanitarian perspectives. The class will explore pollution monitoring and management, and biodiversity conservation in the field and in the lab. Students will also learn the art of storytelling and filmmaking, while exploring the role of the arts in communicating about environmental problems and solutions, especially in a history and culture-rich local context. Students will come away from this course with a solid background in the physical and natural sciences, as well as appreciating the role of environmental ethics and arts in problem solving.

Please forward to interested students and faculty. The student application is here.
Visit the website for the Middlebury School of the Environment (http://www.middlebury.edu/environment) for more details about the program.

 

 

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