Category: Education

Welcome to Roosevelt and to Chicago, Dr. Ali Malekzadeh, RU’s President-elect

Ali_Malekzadeh-200pxYesterday I attended a rare event in the history of any university: a reception honoring the formal election of new president. Faculty, staff, administrators, students, alumni, and trustees gathered in the glorious space of Roosevelt’s Murray-Green Library on the 10th floor of the landmark Auditorium Building to welcome Dr. Ali Malekzadeh, Roosevelt’s sixth president, who will take over the leadership of our institution on July 1st, 2015.

One notable thing about yesterday’s reception was that four generations of RU presidents were in attendance: Chuck Middleton, our current president; Ted Gross, who led RU from 1988 to 2002, and was president when I was hired in 1996; and Rolf Weil, who presided from 1964 to 1988. Dr. Weil is very elderly now, but still with it — and it was inspiring to see him obviously enjoying the proceedings. Like him, President-elect Ali (as he kindly insisted on being called, rather than by his full name and title) is a business-oriented lifelong academic, rather than the last two presidents who came from literature and history, respectively.

I got to speak with Dr. Malekzadeh twice, albeit briefly, and found him funny, warm, articulate, charming, and friendly. He seemed very comfortable working a room and schmoozing, and perhaps that is among the many important qualities a president must have. When I identified myself simply as “Mike Bryson, Sustainability Studies,” with no other explanation, he looked at me keenly and said emphatically, “That is the future. We will talk.” I can only guess at his true feelings on the subject of sustainability and higher ed — but his response seemed to imply that on an important fundamental level, he gets it. We will see!

I wish President-elect Malekzadeh all the best in what I hope will be a long and fruitful career for him at Roosevelt as he leads us through a tremendous time of transition and, it must be noted, great financial challenges. His reputed fundraising acumen will be most welcome and is urgently needed.

Selected press articles: Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune, and Daily Herald

Sustainability and Biodiversity at the Field Museum

Last Monday, as a warm 60+ degree (F) day enveloped downtown Chicago in a splendid preview of spring, my students and I hiked from Roosevelt’s Gage Building in the Loop to the lakefront, where we strolled southward to that great edifice of natural history and biodiversity, the Field Museum. Once there, we met up with Carter O’Brien, the Museum’s sustainability manager (who basically created the job over a number of years after spearheading the FMNH’s recycling program). Carter gave us a comprehensive walking tour of the museum’s grounds, community garden, and loading dock.

SUST 210 visits the FMNH with Carter O'Brien (front left), the museum's sustainability manager (aka "green guru")
SUST 210 visits the FMNH with Carter O’Brien (front left), the museum’s sustainability manager (aka “green guru”)

Along with many of staff and researchers at the FMNH, Carter has spearheaded the museum’s efforts to green its practices in energy consumption, waste management, food service, recycling, transportation, exhibit design, and gardening. Despite being an institution dedicated to studying and conserving the world’s rich trove of biodiversity, the Field Museum until recently was not at all sustainable in its own operations, an irony not lost on environmental advocates such as Carter and many of his museum colleagues. Now the FMNH is a recognized leader in transforming old buildings into sustainably-managed facilities, as it recently garnered a LEED Gold rating on its operations and maintenance from the US Green Building Council, only the 2nd existing museum building in the US to do so, and it has just received a $2 million grant to redevelop its grounds within Chicago’s famed Museum Campus in ways that enhance biodiversity, water conservation, and public education.

Carter brought us inside through the seemingly ancient (and surprisingly small) loading dock, thorough a phalanx of heavy doors, narrow passageways, and claustrophobic elevators (all part of the FM’s 19th Century charm), and to the Botany research division, one of the four major research/collections areas of the museum. There we met up with the equally ebullient Dr. Matt Von Konrat, who has many titles at the museum but is best known as an early land plant botanist (which means he studies mosses and liverworts both here and abroad) and the Head of Botanical Collections at the museum.

Dr. Matt Von Konrat in the Botany Collection at the FMNH (photo: M. Wasinka)
Dr. Matt Von Konrat in the Botany Collection at the FMNH (photo: M. Wasinka)

Dr. Von Konrat was kind enough to set up a sampling of preserved plant specimens from the Museum’s vast collection, which when arrayed on a huge wooden table represented a journey of 500 million years of land plant evolution. Many of these examples had special significance as type specimens, which are recognized as being archetypal examples of the species that are used for benchmarking certain key identifying characteristics.

Photo: M. Wasinka
Photo: M. Wasinka

One plant, a particularly tiny moss, held special significance in a recent court case about Burr Oak Cemetery scandal  in the far South Side Chicago neighborhood of Dunning. Cemetery caretakers dug up several hundred human remains and dumped them in a mass grave in order to sell additional plots in the cemetery over a several year period. The moss was part of forensic evidence analyzed by Dr. Von Konrat that proved the involvement of cemetery employees in this heinous crime. The story illustrates the profoundly important role that environmental evidence can play in forensics, and the potential value in aligning the study of botany (and sustainability) with that of criminal justice.

After both of these splendid tours, my students and I ventured forth into the public area of the museum — its exhibits, naturally! — where we inspected the notable (and LEED Gold certified) conservation exhibit, Restoring Earth, which documents FMNH efforts to conserve natural and human communities in South America as well as restore local prairie, woodland, and wetland ecosystems here in the Chicago region.

Photo: M. Wasinka
Photo: M. Wasinka

SUST 390 “Writing Urban Nature” Course Preview (Summer 2015)

RU students paddle the North Branch of the Chicago River, Fall 2013 (M. Bryson)
RU students paddle the North Branch of the Chicago River, Fall 2012 (M. Bryson)

This May 2015 one-week-intensive section of SUST 390 Writing Urban Nature is an environmental literature and writing special topics course distinguished by in-the-field explorations of various natural and urban environments. The class provides a unique immersive experience in “nature close at hand” at sites of ecological and cultural significance in the Chicago region. Strong emphasis on close observing place and people; walking and exploring landscapes and neighborhoods; and reflecting on / discussing compelling ideas, stories, and images of urban nature, broadly defined.

Sand County AlmanacAssigned readings will include selections from May Watts, Reading the Landscape of America; Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac; Joel Greenberg, Of Prairie, Woods, and Water; blogs such as City Creatures and The Nature of Cities; and other texts. The reading list will be distributed well in advance of the class so that students will have time to read ahead prior to the week’s explorations and discussions.

Daily activities will consist of field excursions to sites of interest in Chicago’s urban landscape; discussion of assigned readings; quiet time for personal reflection, journal writing, and photography; and potential service work for local environmental organizations. Students’ daily journal and photo archive will provide material for a personal/critical reflection essay (due one week after the class ends) that incorporates text and image, critically analyzes selections from the course reading list, and reflects on the student’s individual experience in the class. Collectively, the class will produce an online project (“Chicago’s Urban Nature”) as part of the SUST at RU Blog that features creative/reflective writing that reflects upon their experience and incorporates both text and image.

SUST students visit the North Park Village Nature Center, Fall 2012 (M. Bryson)
SUST students visit the North Park Village Nature Center, Fall 2012 (M. Bryson)

Potential sites we will explore include Chicago’s lakeshore parklands and public spaces, the Chicago River (on foot and/or by canoe), neighborhood parks of cultural and ecological significance, nature centers on the North and South Sides, selected urban farms within the city, and the natural and industrial lands of the Calumet Region on the far South Side. The week’s schedule is still under development, but the varied locations will give students an opportunity to explore many seldom-seen parts of the city within a unique learning context. Most of these activities will be free, though a small fee may be charged to cover certain trips (e.g., canoe trip on the Chicago River). Public transportation will be used to access most sites. Carpooling options will be discussed at the May 6 pre-session (see below).

Who Should Take this Class

SUST students working at the Eden Place Nature Center on Chicago's South Side, 2 Dec 2014 (M. Bryson)
SUST students working at the Eden Place Nature Center on Chicago’s South Side, 2 Dec 2014 (M. Bryson)

SUST 390 Writing Urban Nature is cross-listed with ENG 340 Writing Urban Nature and PLS 371 Humanities Seminar II. SUST majors can take SUST 390 Writing Urban Nature for major credit as a SUST core course, as a Relevant Elective within their major, or as a general elective. Students who have taken a previous version of SUST 390 are eligible to take this version for credit. English majors may use this as an upper-level ENG credit or as an elective course in SUST or ENG. Students in the PLS Flex-Track program may register for PLS 371 for Humanities II credit as an upper-level general education course, or take SUST 390 for elective credit.

Registration Information

  • SUST 390-X1 Writing Urban Nature — CRN 30666 / Pre-req: ENG 102 with a grade of C- or better
  • ENG 340-X1 Writing Urban Nature — CRN 30689 / Pre-req: ENG 220 with a grade of C- or better
  • PLS 371-X1 Humanities Seminar II — CRN 30690 / Pre-req: PLS 370 or concurrent; admission to Flex-Track program for adults or advisor consent

Meets May 18-22 from 10:30am to 5pm at RU’s Chicago Campus. Required pre-session on May 6 from 4:30-6pm, room TBA. Some additional work online required; final assignment due May 29.

For more information, contact Prof. Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu or 312-281-3148).

The “Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future” Project: An Online Convergence of Teaching & Research

JESS journal coverLast month, my article entitled “Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future: Student Research, Social Media, and the ‘Edge City’ Suburb” appeared online (12 Dec 2014) in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Science, the publication of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences and one of my professional tribes. This anticipates the essay’s print appearance in the journal’s forthcoming special issue on Integrating and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Sustainable Cities and Regions. You can access a pdf of the article here.

During the Fall 2014 semester at Roosevelt University, undergraduate students from two of my Sustainability Studies classes — SUST 210 Sustainable Future (online) and 240 Waste & Consumption (honors) — contributed over 30 blog posts on news and topical developments in urban/suburban sustainability in the Chicago region, thus continuing the site’s blogging tradition when we launched the site as a SUST 210 student research project on Earth Day 2011.

In addition, these classes conducted in-depth research on sustainability efforts and waste-related environmental justice issues in several dozen communities, both locally and across the US. The fruits of this research will be posted in coming weeks to the Community Profiles and Environmental Justice sections of this site, so stay tuned for what will be a significant expansion of the SSF website. To date, the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future (SSF) project includes 163 blog posts and 100 in-depth essays on a wide range of sustainability issues, problems, and solutions. The vast majority of this content is student-authored, which is a cool demonstration of the value of the site as a learning tool and educational resource.

Members of my SUST 240 Waste & Consumption honors seminar (Fall 2014) on a field trip to Canal Origins Park and Bubbly Creek, Chicago IL (Sept 2014)
Members of my SUST 240 Waste & Consumption honors seminar (Fall 2014) on a field trip to Canal Origins Park and Bubbly Creek, Chicago IL (Sept 2014)

Register for Spring 2015 Classes

Advising and registration are now ongoing (since Nov 1st) for the Spring 2015 semester at Roosevelt. RU students, please look over the Spring 2015 schedule using this coursefinder, check remaining course requirements on your curriculum checksheet, and email or call your assigned academic advisor with your planned schedule and any questions you have about your upcoming classes. Your advisor will provide you with an RU Access registration code so you can register.

Sustainability Studies courses offered in Spring 2015:

SUST 210 Sustainable Future (Chicago, M 1-3:30pm, Bryson)
SUST 220 Water (online, Jones)
SUST 230 Food (Chicago, T 6-8:30pm, Gerberich)
SUST 240 Waste (online, Bryson)
SUST 310 Energy & Climate Change (Chicago, W 6-8:30pm, Flower)
SUST 340 Policy, Law, & Ethics (online, Hoffman)
SUST 390 Sustainable Campus (Chicago, W 3-5:3pm, Bryson)

December is a super busy time of the academic year, but don’t neglect getting in touch with your advisor; it’s the best time to get signed up for classes. For additional useful info, see this Advising Resources page here on my website.

Best of luck during finals week!

RU Offers “Four Freedoms” Student Fellowships for 2014-15

The Four Freedoms Fellowship offers Roosevelt University students a unique opportunity to develop leadership, public speaking, and advocacy skills to effect change on critical issues. Throughout the academic year, selected Fellows will participate in a series of interactive trainings to deepen their knowledge of the political landscape, learn effective strategies to influence decision-makers, and be able to powerfully articulate their personal stories as a tool for change. Trainings will take place on Friday mornings at the Chicago Campus starting on Sept. 26th.

Four Freedoms Fellows will be awarded $750 in the form of financial aid that will be divided between the Fall and Spring semesters. Both undergraduate and graduate students from all academic disciplines are encouraged to apply. Fellows will have the opportunity to take a leadership role in advocacy efforts at Roosevelt and have occasion to represent the University at press conferences or events with elected officials.

Interested students may apply here. The deadline for submitting online applications is Sept. 10th, 2014. For questions about the Fellowship, please contact Jennifer Tani, Assistant Vice President for Community Engagement at RU, at jtani@roosevelt.edu or 312-341-2375.

Water, Climate Change, Science, & Literature

This month one of Chicago’s public radio stations, WBEZ (91.5 FM), has kicked off a fascinating and timely series about water, science, and the humanities. It’s called After Water, and according to the series’ website, the project asks “writers to peer into the future—100 years or more—and imagine the region around the Great Lakes, when water scarcity is a dominant social issue. It’s a cosmic blend of art and science . . . [that will feature] stories, research, photos and more.”

Professor Gary Wolfe
Professor Gary Wolfe

Kicking off the series this week was a Morning Shift conversation on WBEZ with my longtime Roosevelt colleague, Dr. Gary Wolfe (the guy who hired me, by the way), one of the world’s foremost authorities on the literature of sci-fi and fantasy. Gary was in the house to talk about the emergent genre of “cli-fi,” or fiction about climate change, and its relation to water issues. Not only was Gary completely at home in this milieu due to his many years’ experience doing his own radio show in Chicago, “Interface,” but this gig was an apt follow-up to his teaching of a Special Topics SUST 390 seminar this past spring entitled “Sustainability in Film and Fiction.”

I look forward to following the stories and images within this unfolding After Water series, as it’s a great example of the need to integrate science and the humanities in constructing compelling narratives about the crisis of climate change, a subject I addressed briefly in this short essay from last summer.

June 2014 Guest Talks and Conference Presentations

The first part of June has been exceptionally chatty, academically speaking, as I think I’ve had my busiest week ever in my 20-year academic career giving presentations and hobnobbing with colleagues at other institutions. Thus far I’ve been right here in the Chicago area, though a nice little trip to New York City awaits later this week — which is exciting, since I haven’t been to New York since the fall of 2006 (for the SLSA Conference at NYU).

JJC greenhouse (photo: Steinkamp Photography / Legat Architects)
The LEED-certified greenhouse at JJC (photo: Steinkamp Photography / Legat Architects)

Last Sunday, as we flipped the home calendars to June, I drove out to Joliet Junior College, the nation’s oldest community college, to give a guest lecture entitled “Sustainability and the Future of Cities: Connecting Curriculum to Community” (pdf), as part of JJC’s three-day faculty retreat for the Grand Prairie Project — an effort to encourage the integration of sustainability across JJC’s curriculum led by my colleague, friend, and fellow Joliet public school alum Maria Rafac, an architectural technology prof at the college.

Institute for Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago
Institute for Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago

Then on Wednesday, June 4th, I collaborated with an RU professor, Aaron Shoults-Wilson, on a presentation (pdf) about sustainability/environmental science education at Roosevelt for a “Research and Education towards Sustainability Symposium” sponsored by the Institute for Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University in Chicago. This small gathering was especially interesting, since the IES was hosting a group of Vietnamese environmental scientists and educators from Vietnam National University. Learning about their work in Ho Chih Min City and other locations throughout Vietnam was utterly fascinating, and they in turn were extremely excited by the chance to explore Chicago and meet like-minded colleagues here in the US. I also got my first tour of Loyola’s new IES facility in my old neighborhood of East Rogers Park, opened in Fall 2013, which is quite impressive indeed.

Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago IL
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago IL

Finally, on Thursday, June 5th, I gave my first talk at the Field Museum of Natural History along the downtown Chicago lakefront, as part of the museum’s Interchange monthly lecture series sponsored by the Dept. of Science and Education. These gatherings are internal to the museum, and provide a chance for researchers to present data and report on works in progress from all the various disciplines of the museum in a friendly setting that encourages active discussion and cross-disciplinary connections. My talk, “Reading the Book of Nature: May Theilgaard Watts’ Art of Ecology,” (pdf), reflected on how the arts and humanities complement scientific discourse, in this case within the context of urban ecosystems wherein live over 80% of Americans and more than 50% of people worldwide.

Pace University, New York City (GraduateGuide.com)
Pace University, New York City (GraduateGuide.com)

Later this week, I fly to New York City for the annual conference of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, one of the academic tribes of which I’m an enthusiastic member. Hosted this year by Pace University in lower Manhattan, near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, the conference theme is “Welcome to the Anthropocene: From Global Challenge to Plantery Stewardship.” This smallish conference of 500-600 attendees is always notable for its friendly and informal atmosphere, great spirit of convivial networking among colleagues from many different areas of academia (from the sciences to the social sciences to the humanities), and fun field excursions. My talk about my teaching experiences in a service-learning course at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm is part of a panel entitled “Innovative Pedagogies for Environmental Justice and Community Engagement.” I’m eager to hear what my fellow panelists have in store for our session!

Assessing Sustainability Literacy at RU

Yesterday I took part in an event at Roosevelt sponsored by its Office of Institutional Research, Assessment, and Reaccreditation on academic program assessment. Faculty and staff from over a dozen academic departments across the six colleges of the university presented data and conclusions from the 2013-14 academic assessment work that was supported by a “microgrant” program for the Spring 2014 semester.

I gave a short presentation (see this pdf of the slideshow) on the assessment work we did in the Sustainability Studies Program in 2013-14: the Sustainability Literacy Survey that was administered to all Fall 2013 SUST classes as well as to a sub-sample of other CPS undergraduate courses in Criminal Justice and Professional & Liberal Studies gen ed seminars.

This preliminary survey was a key part of the SUST Program’s Assessment Plan for 2013-14, and was based on the “Assessment of Sustainability Knowledge” survey instrument developed in July 2013 by The Environmental & Social Sustainability Lab, The Ohio State University. This survey was endorsed as assessment tool by AASHE and has been promoted on the AASHE blog to other universities wishing to gather comparable data about the general level of sustainability literacy among US undergraduates.

Goals of the Sustainability Literacy (SL) Survey

  • Determine baseline SL of RU undergrads in 2013
  • Compare groups of students (by class, age, major, etc.)
  • Facilitate program assessment in relation to SL at other US universities
  • Provide one means of assessing the current SUST curriculum

Results

Despite the rather small sample size (173 surveys will returned) of this pilot study, some useful data resulted from the effort. The graph below displays how different majors performed on the survey in terms of overall % of correct answers out of 28 questions that covered environmental, economic, and social topics related to sustainability. SUST majors outperformed all other groups by a wide margin here.

SUST Literacy Assmt 2014-05-09 Avg Score by Major

Another useful way to view the data is to convert the % correct scores of each respondent to a letter grade, using the traditional scale of 90% = A, etc. This provides a more nuanced look at how students in different groups do on the assessment beyond the mean score. Notably, almost two-thirds of SUST majors scored a B or higher on the survey, while only 6% failed. In contrast, 87% of non-SUST majors scored a C or lower on the survey.

SUST Literacy Assmt 2014-05-09 SUST vs non-SUST Grades Conclusions

  • Sustainability Studies majors as a group score significantly higher on this sustainability literacy survey than non-SUST students at RU as a whole, or any other sub-group of undergraduate majors.
  • RU students as a whole score slightly lower than undergrads at the Ohio State University (64% vs. 69%, respectively), but their performance is comparable.
  • Overall, undergraduate students at RU are relatively illiterate about basic sustainability facts and issues, as their average score is a “D” when converted to a letter grade.
  • SUST majors scores potentially indicate the value of the curriculum at improving basic sustainability literacy at the undergraduate level, though some such students may enter RU with a higher baseline level of SL.
  • There is a real need for sustainability education across the board for all undergraduate students, regardless of major.

Next Steps for SUST Program Assessment

  • Continue analyzing results of SL Survey and share with SUST part-time faculty.
  • Explore feasibility of administering the student to a representative sample of all RU undergrads in 2014-15.
  • Contribute assessment data to RU’s Environmental Sustainability Committee and discuss relevance STARS 2.0 reporting for overall university sustainability efforts.
  • Follow up with other assessment activities: curriculum review, alumni survey, writing/communication/critical analysis skills, etc.

Special Acknowledgment: The “Rogers Factor”

Key contributions to this survey assessment and analysis were made by two invaluable people at RU, who together constitute the “Rogers Factor”:

Ester Rogers, RU’s Office of Institutional Research: helped with survey design & implementation, suggestions for modes of analysis, and Microgrant funding support during the Spring 2014 semester.

Scott Rogers, junior SUST major in the College of Professional Studies: performed key data entry work and contributed a wide range of preliminary analysis of survey results.

 Resources on Sustainability Assessment