Meeting Time: Mondays and Wednesdays 2:15pm-3:40pm

Place: Room 102 Wimberley Hall

Instructors:                  Steven Simpson
                                     136 Wittich Hall
                                    785-8216
                                    http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/simpson

Office Hours: Wednesdays 10am – 11am ; Thursdays 9:30am
(also any other time by appointment or drop-in)

Books from Textbook Rental	Berry, W. 1977. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
	Creighton, S. H. 1998. Greening the Ivory Tower: Improving the Environmental Track Record of Universities, Colleges, and Other Institutions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
	Eagan, D. J., and Orr, D. W., Eds. Spring, 1992. The Campus and Environmental Responsibility. New Directions for Higher Education, No. 77. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
	Keniry, Julian. 1995. Ecodemia: Campus Environmental Stewardship at the Turn of the 21^st Century. Washington, DC: National Wildlife Federation.
	Quinn, D. 1992. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. New York: Bantam/Turner.
	Sax, J. 1980. Mountains Without Handrails: Reflections on the National Parks. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Selections on Reserve in the Library	Berry, T. 1988. “The Ecological Age,” from The Dream of the Earth. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
	Leopold, A. 1991. () Selections from The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays, S. L. Flader and J. B. Callicott, Eds. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Selection Available On-line	Emerson, R. W. 1883. Nature. Available at: http://www.rwe.org/works/Nature__complete.htm
	Simpson. S. 2003. “The Inventor’ Mantle Clock,” “The Interrupted Stargazers,” and “The Owl and the Lady Slipper.” Selections from The Leader Who is Hardly Known: Self-less Teaching from the Chinese Tradition. Oklahoma City, OK: Wood N’ Barnes. Available at: http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/simpson/leaderwhoishardlyknown.htm

Course Description

As the capstone course of the Environmental Studies minor, Env 496 has two overriding purposes. The first is to culminate the sequence of courses with an action component (i.e., all students will be involved in an environmental service project or two). Second purpose is to help students continue to develop not so much their environmental philosophy, but their environmental lifestyle. In other words, the course is intended to have students clarify their personal environmental responsibility in the years immediately following graduation from their undergraduate program.

Tentative Schedule

The schedule and student responsibilities listed below are tentative, dependent on the prior experiences and the learning objectives of the participants in the course.

Date

Topic

Readings

Jan. 27

Introduction

Jan. 29

Environmental Literacy

Tblisi Declaration (http://www.gdrc.org/uem/ee/tbilisi.html)
Also Eagan and Orr, pp. 3-8, 65-76

Feb. 3

Considering Environmental Action

Feb. 5

Unsettling of America

Wendell Berry, pp. 3-26

Feb. 10

Crisis of Agriculture

Wendell Berry, pp. 27-48

Feb. 12

Jefferson and Morrill

Wendell Berry, pp. 143-169

Feb. 17

Evergreen National Park

Feb. 19

Evergreen National Park

Feb. 24

The Ideal

Sax, pp. 1-26

Feb. 26

Feb. 27

No Class

Wind and Solar Power
on the Farm

1pm - 4pm La Crosse Center
6pm --- Organic Farming Exhibition Hall

March 3

Judging Recreation

Sax, 27-60

March 5

Internalizing the Experience

Sax, 61-110

March 10

Project Update and Web pages

March 12

No Class

March 16- March 21

Spring Break (No Class)

March 24

Progress Report

March 26

Why a gorilla?

Quinn, 3-63

March 31

Leavers and takers

Quinn, 67-148

April 2

Right vs. what works

Quinn, 151-end

April 7

The Roots of Sand County

Leopold, all reserve readings

April 9

Friday,
April 11

No Class

Field Trip to the Shack
8am - 5pm??

April 14

No Class

April 16

The Ecological Age

Thomas Berry, “The Ecological Age

April 21

Tao and our relationship w/Nature

Simpson, Chapter 10, 11

April 23

Tao (con’t)

Simpson, Chapter 12

April 28

No Class

April 30

May 2-3

No Class

Walkabout in
Black River State Forest

10am on Friday - 2pm on Saturday

May 5

Weekend debriefing

May 7

Conclusion

Grading

Journal	60 pts.
Website Update Participation	10 pts. 30 pts

Journal Optional Early Submission, March 3; Final Submission, May 5
During the semester, students will read books and articles for the course, discuss the readings in class, perform environmental service, take a field trip or two, and interact with their environment and community. Through a minimum of two entries/week, students are expected to bring together these experiences into a coherent whole and put this coherence to paper. Entries should be double-spaced typed. Grading will be based on the following criteria:

Demonstrated understanding of the assigned readings …………………… 20 points

Demonstrated understanding of class discussions ………………….....……. 20 points

Demonstrated understanding of service project(s)…………………….. 20 points

Clarity and depth of personal viewpoints (incl. substantiation)…………... 20 points

Flow, grammar, quality of prose………………………………………..… 20 points

Website Update April 21
Each student will review and update one of the Env 201 website topics. The site is http://www.uwlax.edu/murphy/environment/index.html. Topics include biodiversity, global warming, overpopulation, sustainability, environmental racism, over-consumption, and genetically modified organisms.

Participation
The overall success of the course depends upon student participation. This means doing the reading ahead of class meetings and actively contributing to the class discussions. It means taking service projects seriously and bringing the experiences of the service projects into class discussion. Attendance will not taken, but attendance is assumed. Students will be asked to submit a short narrative explaining the grade that they think that they should receive. This will be taken into consideration when determining the participation grade