Western Washington's Conservation Challenge

Sometimes, in environmental studies, the goals are so big that they are overwhelming. Maybe that was Mark Powell's inspiration for the highly focused challenge he just threw out to students in a guest lecture at Western Washington University.

Powell, a former university professor and scientist with a focus on conservation and sustainable fishing who blogs now at "Blogfish", calls his idea "3 C conservation". The first C is for change--picking out the conservation change you want to see happen. The second is for context--make it easy for people to understand and embrace. And the third is for compelling--using the best tools new media has to offer to get the most people involved and contributing.

Western Washington seems a good place to issue such a challenge. The Bellingham-based institution offers both a B.S. and a B.A. in environmental studies, the latter with a concentration in either environmental education or planning and policy through its Huxley College of the Environment. Nicholas Zaferatos, one of its professors, has just been named the principal investigator of a European Union project to build sustainable economy trade ties in the Mediterranean. The university also has a green car project through its Vehicle Research Institute.

Image, credit: Viking 32, Western Washington University

CBS Looks At Green Jobs

So you tell the folks you're going to major in environmental studies, and what's the first thing you're likely to hear? "What are you going to do with a degree in that?"

CBS News' Early Show ran a segment earlier this week that looked at some of the green jobs that are popping up around the country. The piece highlighted obvious opportunities in environmental law and engineering, both fields that offer substantial salaries, and the growing trend among companies to have social responsibility or sustainability professionals. But it also focused on jobs that could be attained after a community college program, such as an associate's degree in solar power. According to CBS, the starting salary for a solar installation pro is $40,000 a year.

The CBS piece, by correspondent Danny Seo, also noted that there is a rising demand for talent in fields that might not be covered by a traditional college degree, such as artists and designers. It says that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks growing and shrinking areas for employment in America, has picked out green interior design for homes and businesses as a fast-growing field.

Image credit: hmm360 at Morguefile.com

Green In Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Morris has had an extremely green campus for years. It gets up to 60% of its power from wind turbines like the one at left. Now it has a major to match.

Last week the university, which is based in the west/central part of the state and is one of five campuses of the University of Minnesota, announced that it will have a full-fledged environmental studies major come fall. The interdisciplinary program builds on an earlier ES concentration with courses such as "Environmental Problems and Policy", "Environmental Biology" and an English class called "The Environmental Imagination". There will be internship and research opportunities with soil and wildlife conservation agencies, and the university says it will add a faculty expert in fisheries management and environmental policy and ethics next fall.

UMM is continuing to green its campus too. It will open a sustainable dorm, dubbed the Green Prairie Community, in the fall of 2009, and it is scheduled to be energy self-sufficient through onsite renewable generation by 2010.

Image credit: University of Minnesota, Morris

Religion And The Environment

Science and religion haven't gotten along all that well lately. So it might come as a surprise that the one place that they are finding some common ground is in environmental studies.

How so? Well, the historic mission of many Christian colleges is to help students care for the world that God has given them. And that places the environment squarely on their curriculum.

Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, which grew out of the Wesleyan movement, offers a bachelor's in environmental science. St. Norbert, a Catholic college in Wisconsin founded by the Norbertine order, does too. Santa Clara University, a Jesuit school in California's Silicon Valley, offers both environmental science and environmental studies, and trumpets the fact that its alumni magazine is printed on paper and at a printing facility certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

All of which leads me to Environmentalchristian's Weblog. Its author is a Baptist geologist pursing a master's of science in environmental geochemistry at Texas A&M. What he has to say about being a Christian and an environmentalist makes for very interesting reading indeed.

Green Studies Add Up At Holy Cross

Colleges are structuring environmental studies programs in many different ways. There are policy tracks and science tracks, programs with a focus on the domestic economy and those that take a global view.

Until last week, I hadn't seen a math angle. But there it is at Holy Cross, and it has, according to the college, become very popular. It might have something to do with the fact that Catherine Roberts, who is an associate professor of mathematics, is also the director of the college's Environmental Studies program. She teaches a course called Environmental Mathematics (in the Holy Cross catalog as Math 110), and this semester it was full--with a waiting list.

Environmental Mathematics is just one component to the environmental studies program at Holy Cross. But it seems a fair barometer of a larger trend there. The college says there were eight Environmental Studies students graduated in 2004; 12 in 2005; 23 in 2006; and 33 in 2007. There's a lot happening outside the math department too. Roberts has rallied professors for a series of 15 free lectures that range from a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday to women in environmental jobs.

Image, credit: Catherine Roberts, by John Buckingham

Focus The Nation, Hit--And Miss

America's colleges and universities focused on the environment yesterday, but what about the rest of the country?

First, the good news. Higher education largely heeded the call of the environmental advocacy group Focus The Nation: 1,200 colleges and universities hosted events, as did 300 K-12 schools across the country. So many users tried to watch the group's Webcast, "The 2% Solution", that the site crashed. Collegiate publications did a bang-up job covering the event. By the goals that FTN had set for itself, it was a big hit.

But the mainstream media? Not so much. OK, it is tough to command front-page space on a day when Microsoft makes a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! As you might have expected, FTN made the California papers with staff-written stories in The San Jose Mercury News, San Diego Union Tribune and Los Angeles Times. The FTN story didn't make the print edition of The New York Times, although its Web site ran a dispatch from the Associated Press. USA Today had the story only in print, though it's hard to tell how many editions ran it.

Did the big press miss the big story? Only time will tell.