As many students groveled for spots in science labs and lecture classes last week, some took a different route, turning to student-led forums that provide a learning experience outside the traditional university offerings. Two earth-friendly forums have been receiving particular attention this semester: Sustainable Building and Organic Farming.
Forums are student-facilitated and generally meet once a week for several hours. Up to fifteen students can receive a pass/fail credit for their participation in forums that run the full academic gamut from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to “Producing Electronic Multimedia.” According to Ari Bain ’05, who with Meredith Cowart ’05 co-facilitates “Sustainable Building: to boldly build what no architect has built before,” forums provide an opportunity for students to focus on areas that are of interest to them and find concrete applications.
“I worked toward creating this forum because I am generally frustrated with the state of higher education,” said Bain. “I see a great value in learning to create tangible, practical things alongside acquiring the ability to deconstruct and critique.”
Facilitators admit a limited number of students during drop/add. According to Adan Martinez ’05, who co-facilitates “Community Rooted Solutions; sustainable, organic food systems and the myth of biotechnology,” more simply known as Organic Farming, with Jimmy Purvis ’04, an overwhelming 43 hopeful students showed up at the first informational meeting on Thursday, Jan 23. An additional fifteen e-mailed to say they couldn’t make the meeting but were still interested in the class.
Part of Organic Farming’s popularity stems from the fact that it has already been a successful forum for two years. Martinez says he and Purvis sent e-mails to relevant listserves that were forwarded more widely than they expected, and also attributes the forum’s popularity to a changing campus with fewer opportunities to investigate organic issues.
“I think there’s generally less of an outlet for people interested in what we’re doing,” Martinez said. “This is a way to explore that.”
For Sustainable Building, students completed an application responding to three basic questions: why they were interested in the course, what their background was, and what they wanted to see taught. According to Bain, 20 – 25 students turned in these applications and she and Cowart selected the final of the fifteen students with particular attention to their goal of incorporating students with many different levels of experience.
Bain and Cowart advertised through word-of-mouth, announcements at Veg-Out, a vegan dinner at Earth House, and e-mails to friends and relevant listserves. Bain asserted that the Sustainable Building’s popularity is also partly due to growing campus concern over sustainability.
“There’s a growing mass of people concerned about sustainable issues and realizing they can’t ignore them,” Bain said. “The creation of the environmental studies program this year is part of that.”
Both forums have detailed syllabi with reading lists and weekly assignments, often involving presentations and field trips. After the winter thaw, Organic Farming will spend half its class time outside. Overall, the facilitators stress that the students will be largely responsible for determining the direction of classes.
“We’ve designed the syllabus as a guideline, but the people in the class decide what they teach and what they want to do,” Martinez said.
A mandatory faculty advisor oversees every student forum with student leaders. The faculty advisor for Sustainable Building, American Studies professor Colleen Boyd, who also identifies herself as an environmental anthropologist and ethnohistorian, plans to assist the students and present on aquaculture, part of her area of expertise. She will also be advising a second student forum related to students of color.
“For all the time I spend in libraries or in front of computers these days, I like the notion of hanging out in a garden,” said Boyd. “The kind of work I am involved with, unfortunately, often focuses on bleak circumstances, so I try to counter that with different activities that support positive environmental and community practices.”
This reasoning seems to echo that of the students who started the forums. Bain emphasizes the importance of action versus passive commentary.
“It should be about creating a path toward positive change rather than sitting on the sidelines making cynical comments without a viable vision for the future,” Bain said.
Eight student forums were available this semester, unbeknownst to most students. A list is available at the Registrar. Both Bain and Martinez saw student forums as a sadly under-advertised and underused way for students to explore subjects of interest to them.
“You should be able to do your work because you want to do it, every day of college,” Martinez said.
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