Winter 2011 Issue
Letter from the Editors
Chemistry of Natural Waters: A Partnership Between Northland College and the Bad River Watershed Alliance
Introduction
Northland College is an environmental liberal arts college located in Ashland, Wisconsin. In addition to two, fifteen week semesters, Northland has a May term — a four-week semester where students and faculty focus solely on one course. The Chemistry of Natural Waters is a field and laboratory intensive May-term course taken primarily by chemistry, biology, environmental studies, and geoscience majors. More
Brownfield Action: An Inquiry Based Multimedia Simulation for Teaching and Learning Environmental Science
Introduction
According to the EPA there are presently over half a million brownfields in the United States, but this number only includes sites for which an Environmental Site Assessment has been conducted. The actual number of brownfields is certainly into the millions and constitutes one of the major environmental issues confronting all communities today. Brownfield Action (BA) is an award-winning, web-based simulation and curricular model developed and used for the last ten years by Peter Bower, a senior lecturer at Barnard College, in his introductory environmental science course, to teach undergraduate non-science majors about brownfields, toxification of the environment, and civic engagement. More
Feminist Interventions
Introduction
In my Biology 101 class, we've spent weeks studying DNA transcription, chromosome duplication and the like. We've spent weeks on it, yet, . . . we aren't going to be geneticists, and it's all just empty facts that we've learned but can do nothing with. . . . There are segues into global warming and touches on evolutionary theory, but mostly, it's plod ahead, get this over with. (Rivard 2006). More
A Review of the Literature on Increasing the Representation of Women Undergraduates in STEM Disciplines Through Civic Engagement Pedagogies
Introduction
Despite recognition of the importance of student diversity in enhancing undergraduate STEM education (e.g., Augustine 2005), gender gaps persist in quantitative fields such as physical sciences and engineering (AAUW 1998; Brickhouse 2001; Brotman and Moore, 2008; Campbell et al. 2002; Fadigan and Hammrich 2004; Gilbert and Calvert 2003; Herzig 2004; National Science Board, 2010; Scantlebury and Baker 2007). More
Environmental Release of Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes
Introduction
There is agreement among educators that effective teaching helps students to think critically, communicate effectively, learn self-discipline, develop an understanding of oneself and others, and cultivate the perpetuation of self-education (Freiberg and Driscoll 2001; Cherif and Adams 1993). One effective technique that encourages such participation is role playing. Role playing provides an opportunity for "acting out" conflicts, collecting information about social issues, learning to take on the roles of others, and improving students' social skills. More
Multidisciplinary Engagement of Calculus Students in Climate Issues
Introduction
These days essentially every college student has heard at least something about Earth's warming climate. However, few can articulate even the most basic scientific details, and even fewer have any experience dealing with actual data or calculating anything related to climate change. Over the past decade, there has been an increasing call for scientists to change the types of problems they work on and to reconsider how they address these problems (Palmer et. al., 2005; Lubchenco 1998). More
Mud Muck and Service: Action Research on Direct and Indirect Service Learning in Ecology
Introduction
As service-learning (SL) becomes more prevalent in university courses, the relative proportion of courses in the scientific disciplines has not kept pace (Furco, 2001). In many cases, an understandable challenge is simultaneously introducing a thorough, often rigorous, canon of new material while working to provide opportunities for students to apply that material to issues in local communities (Sherman and MacDonald 2009). More
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