Environmental Leaders ARC - Required Courses
UGST 112: Topics in the Environmental Leaders ARC
Class overview: Our urgent and complex environmental problems require interdisciplinary solutions from planners and designers, engineers and scientists, legal experts and policy makers, energy experts and farmers, inventors and entrepreneurs, artists and communicators, and those willing to advocate for the needs of humans and non-human species. How will you make a difference?
The Environmental Leaders ARC seminar is not a deep-dive into any single environmental topic nor is it a college-level extension of AP Environmental Science. Rather, the ARC seminar is a chance for exploration, experimentation, reflection, community-building, and personal development and goal-setting around multiple ways to make a difference, at UO and beyond. This 4-credit hour course spans two quarters (2 credit hours in Fall, 2 in Winter) and counts for a social science core education credit.
- Fall quarter, with Dr. Sarah Stoeckl: When it comes to global climate change, we don’t have a data or science problem, we have a storytelling one. In this ARC's seminar we will read stories of a climate-changed world or “cli-fi” and investigate how those stories impact us and others. However, this will not be English class! Instead, the stories will be a launchpad for exploring visions of the future and we will use discussions and activities from human-centered design to dig deeper, explore implications, and envision alternatives. The seminar will also emphasize solutions to climate change and a sustainable future for all, recognizing the unequal impacts of climate change. For your final project you will bring it all together to co-create your own visions of the future we want to build.
- Winter quarter, with Megan Schneider: How can we sustain ourselves in the work of bringing about a better world? This course will provide hands-on learning that supports your development as sustainability leaders. Drawing on Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, we will explore how we can shift our connection to land and each other in service of bringing about the world we envision. The winter seminar will focus on engaging with our campus and local area, building community, and connecting to land. We will be getting outside for this class – prepare to learn about our local ecosystems, get your hands dirty, and have fun!
In this ARC you will get to expand your abilities in critical thinking, climate change impacts and solutions, imagination, and creativity. While we will be authentic about the very real challenges we face with global warming, including the fear, grief, and anger that come with these challenges, we will ultimately focus on shaping a different story—one of solutions and productive transition to a fair and sustainable world for all.
The course is taught by Dr. Sarah Stoeckl (fall), Associate Director in the UO's Office of Sustainability and a literary and cultural studies scholar with training in human-centered design and facilitating groups focused on complex climate-related emotions, and Megan Schneider (winter), Assistant Director in the UO's Student Sustainability Center, an accomplished professor of sustainability and place-based learning, working on her PhD in Education focused on decolonizing higher education.
ENVS 203: Introduction to Environmental Studies—Humanities
Students in the Environmental Leaders ARC will also complete an introductory environmental studies course together in fall quarter. This gives you the opportunity to take classes with friends who have shared interests and lets you help one another throughout the term. The course is comprised of a large lecture and a smaller, weekly discussion section. Environmental Leaders ARC students will be together for both the lecture and the corresponding discussion section.
Description: The way we think about the environment changes our perceptions of it and our commitments to it. In this course, you'll engage the humanities' contribution to Environmental Studies, learning how literature, history, philosophy and art can help produce understandings of the natural world and humanity's ethical relationship to it. The course is required for Environmental Studies and Environmental Science majors and Environmental Leaders ARC participants. The course also fulfills basic general education requirements (Arts and Letters) at the University of Oregon, so you do not need to major or minor in Environmental Studies or Science to benefit.