Campus Ecology Assignments
We worked hard in Campus Ecology. Our readings and conversations were good in themselves, but better because they helped us to complete projects that taught us about our campus and about ourselves. The assignments for the class were designed to help us make sense of our place in the world, both socially and ecologically.
We began with inventories of our own rooms, thinking about the meaning of things. In these essays, we considered the consequences of our consumption, but also the ways that our spaces functioned as oases for reflection, recreation and (sometimes) spirituality.
Next, we wrote essays on the college campus from the perspective of another organism. These stories helped us de-center the human busy-ness of the college, so that we could see the complexities of the campus ecosystem.
After about a month, we formed groups and launched into our research projects on topics like water and waste, food and farming, landscape and natural lands, cars and parking lots, architecture and procurement, religion and values. In the process of preparing our final research projects, we explored different perspectives and expressions of our ideas. We prepared annotations of campus, to make the invisible complexity of our e-college-ical culture visible. We took photographs to explore the visual dimensions of our topic. And we wrote our research papers.
But we also applied our learning in a variety of different forms. We wrote articles for the campus newspaper. We wrote letters to legislators on the political dimensions of our topic. And we wrote proposals to St. Olaf's Sustainability task force.
During Earth Week, we posted the annotations all over campus and we led a college chapel service embodying the radical meaning of religion. Religion comes from a Latin root "religare," which means "to bind together." So religion is the art of connections, showing us how to relate to God, to each other, and to creation.
During the whole semester, we participated in conversations in class and out of it. And we kept journals to reflect on the experiences of the class and the experiences of our lives.
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