Last Friday marked the graduation of several Sustainability Studies majors at Roosevelt: Alexandra Bishay, Jessie Crow Mermel, Kenton Franklin, Keith Nawls, Jeff Wasil, and Joe Zambuto. These former undergraduates walked across the famed Auditorium Theater stage in downtown Chicago to join the growing list of alumni from Roosevelt’s SUST program, which was founded in 2010 and offers classes in downtown Chicago, suburban Schaumburg, and online.
Jessie Crow Mermel and Jeff Wasil at RU’s graduation ceremony, 15 Dec 2012 (photo: M. Bryson)
Kenton Franklin worked as an environmental sustainability work-study student, then intern, at RU’s Schaumburg Campus, and has been an instrumental contributor to the sustainable campus redevelopment efforts focused on making the Schaumburg facility more sustainable in its landscaping, energy use, and recycling. He plans to study environmental economics in graduate school.
Jeff Wasil was already working in the environmental field when we transferred to Roosevelt in 2009, and then soon thereafter declared himself as one of the very first SUST majors at RU in the Fall of 2010. That semester he took SUST 220 Water, and managed to find time to fly to Lake Constance in Switzerland to give a talk at one of the most prestigious water conferences in Europe. Jeff later won acceptance to the University of IL at Chicago’s summer Sustainability Institute in 2011, where he worked on Chicago water conservation issues and planning with fellow undergraduate and graduate students from throughout the region. Jeff is employed as an Engineering Technical Expert in the Evinrude Corporation’s emissions testing, certification, and regulatory program, trying to lower the carbon emissions of boat engines as much as is technically feasible.
Congratulations to all our SUST grads this December, and best of luck to our continuing majors as they enjoy a well-earned rest and gear up for the Spring 2013 semester!
Here is an image posted by one of my students to the last discussion forum of this semester in my Sustainability Studies 220 Water course, along with her comment about it.
It can sometimes be challenging to wrap our minds around water scarcity on Earth when we so often picture it as a blue planet with immensely deep seas. Graphs certainly help to put the idea of water scarcity in perspective, but nothing has driven home this idea as much for me as this image from the USGS. The large blue bubble represents the volume of all the water (salt and fresh) on Earth (its diameter being 860 miles) in comparison to the volume of Earth. The small bubble represents the freshwater on Earth (including the water that is within trees, plants, you and I). And the teeny tiny blue dot by Georgia (look closely) represents all the freshwater that is accessible for our use. It looks smaller than the Great Lakes, but you must imagine it in three dimensions.
We live in a very visual culture. What water-related environmental images have you come across that have had a strong impact on you? What campaigns can you think of that have been successful in using images to impact change? How do you see art, photography, film, etc, having a role in expanding awareness on these critical issues we face? ~Jessie
One of the great things about the USGS page this comes from is that this arresting visual representation of the volume of Earth’s water (and fresh water, and available fresh water) compared to the total volume of Earth as a whole is then accompanied by statistical data and explanations that help us understand the physical story being told in that image. This in turn highlights, and then complicates, the often-evoked dichotomy of image (emotion) and text (reason) — the assumption in popular culture that pictures speak to our hearts and guts, while words appeal to our minds.
Of course, we know that dichotomy to be simplistic, if not simply false. Images such as this do more than pull at our heartstrings — consider the lonely and threatened polar bear here, or seals with fur matted with oil; they get us to think; they cause us to ask questions — in this case, about scale, about the relationship of water to the rest of the Earth’s mass, about the thinness and fragility of the biosphere (which is defined by water, without which there would be no “bio”).
Conversely, textual discourse — whether a poem or a scientific technical report — can stoke our emotions and even spur us to action, especially if we’re open to receiving its message and understand its internal logic. The impacts and effects of both text and image are wonderfully complex, and in the best cases work together more powerfully than they can separately. This example of Earth’s water is a fine case of that, writ large.
The work of science is phenomenally important to the advancement of sustainability in human communities — both in terms of economics and social equity — as well as to the conservation of natural ecosystems, basic resources (air, water, soil), and species. But science alone cannot change the policy that governs our human actions and regulates our excessive tendencies to waste, to think only of the short term, to ignore the unintended consequences of our technologies.
For those huge and ever-present challenges, we also need ideas — and those are debated and created in the creative fires of the arts and humanities in ways that cannot be replicated in scientific and political discourse. For sustainability to be a guiding force of human culture as well as a central feature of our governments (regardless of political persuasion), it needs art, music, literature, and other creative endeavors that define us as a species. And it needs people to connect such expressions to the worlds of science and policy as much as possible, as a means of building bridges and reshaping our views of the world — and our role in it.
This past Saturday, students in my SUST 220 Water and PLS 391 Natural Science seminars at Roosevelt University joined me for an urban ecology adventure on the Upper North Branch of the Chicago River. We convened mid-morning at Linné Woods, a woodland site locatedin the Cook County Forest Preserve system in Morton Grove, IL, where we met up again with Mark Hauser and Claire Snyder, naturalists from Friends of the Chicago River, for a water quality sampling session of the river where it flows past the lovely picnic grounds in Linné Woods.
Claire Snyder and Mark Hauser, naturalists from Friends of the Chicago River (M. Bryson)
While this was the second go-round for my 220 Water students on field sampling (our first session was further downstream on the North Branch, at West River Park in Chicago), the students from my natural science seminar were new to this exercise; however, after three weeks of being introduced to issues and concepts in urban ecology (from biodiversity to climate change), they were ready to get out in the field and get their hands dirty.
Breaking up into different teams, we measured key chemical indicators such as temperature, turbidity, pH, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, phosphate, and total dissolved solids; and wading into the river with D-nets to scrape up mud in search of macro-invertebrates (worms, leeches, crawfish, snails, damselfly nymphs, etc.), we also garnered a biological snapshot of the river’s relative quality.
Down from the meadow and near the riverbank, Claire discusses the various chemical and physical tests we’ll perform to assess the water’s overall quality: pH, nitrate, phosphate, dissolved oxygen, temperature, total dissolved solids, and turbidity. Half our group work on gathering these measurements, while the other half work on the biological survey with Mark. (M. Bryson)
Taken together, these two approaches give us an in-the-moment (chemical) and over-the-longer-term (biological) assessment of the ecological health of the North Branch. This is because while the chemical profile of a river can change day to day — even hour by hour — depending upon the weather and various inputs into the watercourse, the biological community in the river’s benthos is stationary; and some of organisms that live there have been there awhile.
Our quality results were decidedly mixed.The chemical profile we established had some indicators looking rather good, such as a low nitrate reading of 1.3ppm and a fairly neutral pH of 6.5; turbidity levels were also reasonable. The low nitrate reading makes sense, given that in this area of the northern suburbs north of Dempster Ave. (Glenview, Golf, Morton Grove), communities use a separate sewer system, so wastewater treatment plants are not burdened by high inputs of stormwater run-off, and the waterways do not received Combined Sewage Overflows as they do in older suburbs and the city. Moreover, there is not much, if any, agricultural land in this part of the river’s watershed, meaning that fertilizer run-off from farm fields is not an issue.
Hunting for macro-invertebrates in the river’s water and sediments, under rocks, and along the shoreline (M. Bryson)
On the other hand, phosphate levels were rather high at 0.7ppm and the all-important indicator of dissolved oxygen was fairly low (at 7ppm and 60% saturation), posing challenges for many types of organisms to thrive in the river’s watercolumn and benthos. All in all, we calculated a “Quality Index” grade of 68% on our collective chemical analyses, or if you’re using a letter-grade system, D-plus. Nothing to write home about, despite the lovely, even bucolic, scenery in this part of the Chicago River which follows its natural watercourse and winds through forest preserve land. This assessment was echoed rather closely by our macro-invertebrate survey, which identified 8 different taxa of organisms, ranging from several that are “modertely intolerant to pollution” to four that are “fairly” to “very tolerant” of impaired water quality. Our Water Quality index of 2.6 was on the low end of “fair” in terms of biological diversity (call it a C-minus).
Measuring stream flow (M. Bryson)
Finally, our group waded into the stream and use measuring tape, rules, a stopwatch, and a collection of sticks to calculate the stream flow rate. The trick here is to stake out a place where the width and depth of the river is known, and then release the sticks in the current. Students time how long it takes each stick to travel a given distance (here, 40 feet) and then calculate the stream flow (cubic feet/second) accordingly. Our result: a stream flow rate of 98 cubic feet per second.
Curious readers can review our original field data sheets and calculations here; and for photos of our water sampling activities, see this online slideshow.
Here on the upper North Branch, the river follows its natural course and thus has lots of twists and turns. It took us about two hours to paddle five miles. Lots of overhanging branches required careful maneuvering. (M. Bryson)
After a picnic lunch, we used several of our vehicles to shuttle our group up to our canoe launching spot five river miles north, at Blue Star Memorial Woods in Glenview. Here we met up with Dave Rigg and his fellow volunteer canoe guides from Friends of the Chicago River, who would lead us on an intimate exploration of the water, woodlands, and wetlands of the West Fork of the Upper North Branch of the Chicago River — one of the most scenic and naturalistic stretches of the entire Chicago River system. Dave and Co. gave the many inexperienced but enthusiastic paddlers in our group a paddling lesson, and once outfitted with our safety gear, paddles, and a canoe partner, we hit the water for what would be a two-hour downriver journey in utterly perfect October weather.
Ron and Ken getting ready for our first portage (M. Bryson)
The majority of this trip runs through forest preserve property, with the notable exception of the Chick Evans Golf Course that straddles the river where the North Branch splits into its Middle and West Forks. The result is that we traveled along the natural course of the stream, mostly unchanged from before the time of European settlement, with all its twists and turns and with a wide buffer zone of floodplain forest. The heavily vegetated riverbanks proved to be a stunning contrast to the reinforced concrete and rusty steel that encases much of the Chicago River further south in the watershed.
Besides navigating all the twists and turns of a sometimes narrow and always lovely river channel, as well as ducking under overhanging branches, we had to negotiate two portages — the first for a couple of large downed trees, the second for a dam that is slated by the Cook County Forest Preserve for future removal, since it no longer serves a practical purpose and has deleterious impacts upon the river’s flow, water quality, and recreational value.
Portaging around some downed trees (M. Bryson)
These proved to be an interesting and fun challenge, though — especially given our previous contemplation of the long portages done by explorers and Native Americans between the West Fork of the South Branch, through the wetlands of Mud Lake, to the Des Plaines River (a place now commemorated by the Chicago Portage Historic Site).
More photos of our canoe trip can be seen in this online slideshow. In the near future, I’ll post some additional comments about the state of the river and its surrounding landscape that we observed on this trip.
This dam is a significant obstacle for canoeing humans and swimming fish; Friends of the Chicago River advocates its removal, the sooner the better. (M. Bryson)Heading downstream on the Upper North Branch, about a half-mile from our destination in the Linné Woods forest preserve in Morton Grove, IL (M. Bryson)
Roosevelt University celebrates Sustainability Week next Tuesday through Thursday, Oct. 23-25!
Derrick Jensen
Presented by the RU Green student organization, Sustainability Week at RU’s Chicago Campus features a terrific array of events, including an appearance by acclaimed author/activist Derrick Jensen on Oct. 24th and many other speakers, informational sessions, films, and activities.
Today and tomorrow I’m attending the annual Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) conference, held this year in Los Angeles. This is the biggest and most diverse gathering of its kind in the US (if not the world) and brings together faculty from all academic disciplines, graduate and undergraduate students, sustainability coordinators, campus operations administrators, and others to explore every conceivable aspect of sustainability in our colleges and universities.
Given that AASHE sprung into being as recently as 2006, the size and diversity of this annual gathering and the remarkable resources of the association in general are testament to the growing significance of sustainability in higher education’s curricular innovations and physical operations.
This afternoon, Oct. 15th, I’m participating in a roundtable session entitled Teaching Sustainability 101: How Do We Structure An Introductory Course? Chaired by Prof. Tom Schrand of Philadelphia University, the session focuses on the pedagogy and learning objectives of introductory sustainability courses. Fellow participants include:
Our panel discussion, according to our submitted abstract, “brings together five university instructors who have been teaching some version of ‘Intro to Sustainability’ for at least several years. The panelists will share and compare their different approaches to sustainability as an academic discipline, as a practice, and as a set of values. What concepts and ideas are essential, what assignments and activities are effective, what readings and audiovisual materials are engaging, and what outcomes can be achieved? The panel members represent different disciplines, different types of institutions, and different curricular settings. They assess what has worked in their different contexts and what they share in common when they introduce students to education about and for sustainability.”
Roosevelt University is seeking an Assistant Professor in Sustainability Studies for a tenure-track position beginning 15 August 2013. Applicants should have the ability to teach multiple courses in the Sustainability Studies (SUST) undergraduate curriculum as well as interdisciplinary social and/or natural science seminars to adult learners in the Professional and Liberal Studies (PLS) program. Teaching load is six courses per year. Courses are offered at Roosevelt’s Chicago and Schaumburg campuses as well as online.
Duties: (1) Teaching courses within the SUST major as well as adult general education seminars with the PLS program. (2) Assisting with SUST program development through curriculum enhancement and assessment, service learning project development, community outreach, and online social media writing. (3) Maintaining an active scholarly research program within one’s academic discipline and/or the emerging field of sustainability studies. (4) Advising undergraduate students. (5) Performing departmental, college, university, and professional service.
Roosevelt’s Sustainability Studies program, founded in 2010, is the first of its kind in the Chicago region. Housed within the Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies, it maintains a close relationship with the College’s PLS program, a longstanding leader in educating returning adult students. Roosevelt University was founded in 1945 on the principle that higher education should be available to all academically qualified students. Today, Roosevelt is the fourth most ethnically diverse college in the Midwest (U.S. News and World Report, 2011) and a national leader in preparing students to assume meaningful, purposeful roles in the global community.
Minimum Qualifications: PhD or terminal degree in a sustainability-related discipline (or interdisciplinary field) within the natural or social sciences. Active scholarly research program and the ability to apply research to the classroom and communicate findings to a general audience. Evidence of excellence and versatility in teaching. Ability to teach with technology and in multiple formats (such as hybrid and online courses). Understanding of interdisciplinary teaching and curriculum development.
Highly Desirable Criteria: Expertise in multiple areas within sustainability, especially urban agriculture, energy and climate change, and/or waste and recycling. Experience in service learning initiatives and/or academic program development. Experience with both adult and traditional-age students. Enthusiasm for teaching general education seminars as well as more specialized SUST courses. Experience teaching critical thinking, research, and writing.
To Apply: Visit the Roosevelt HR webpage and click on “Full Time Faculty” to find the SUST Assistant Professor listing. Applicants should provide a letter of interest outlining their teaching experience, research program, and suitability for the position; an up-to-date curriculum vitae; and a list of three to five professional references.
For More Information: Consult the SUST program website for details on the curriculum, faculty, and degree options for students. Applicants may address questions to the search committee chair and SUST program director, Professor Michael Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu).
Application deadline is 1 December 2012. Position begins on 15 August 2013.
Looking for a cool sustainability-themed event this coming weekend? Here you go: this Saturday from 10am to 4pm at Truman College on Chicago’s North Side, the Institute for Cultural Affairs will host the “Accelerate 77” Share Fair that brings together people and organizations working on all kinds of sustainability initiatives in each of Chicago’s 77 community areas.
Back in the spring of 2012, my SUST 210 Honors seminar at Roosevelt’s Chicago Campus did on-the-ground research in small groups in 5 different communities in Chicago: Fuller Park, Rogers Park, Little Village, and the North and South halves of the Loop. Their research added to that of students at several other Chicago colleges and universities, as students fanned out across the city to learn about urban sustainability initiatives and meet people from every walk of life, in every neighborhood of the city.
The main room will be filled with representatives of all 77 communities of Chicago. These representatives have been identified as leaders in their respective communities, but a leader can be embodied in many ways. We work towards realising a sustainable Chicago, the foundations of which rely on economic, cultural, and social sustainability. You can expect to see examples of urban agriculture, green technology, and alternative energy, but then also so much more! Each leading program has their own methodology in how to encorporate/encourage environmentalism in their neighborhoods. True to the richness of the Chicago community, we expect a lot of different ideas to come out in our exchange of best practices. To see a full listing of the organizations that have signed up already check out the See Who’s Coming page.
Connection Seminars: Q&A with Citywide Stakeholders
In “breakout rooms” located outside of the main fair space, there will be representatives of programs which work all across Chicago. If you’re part of an organization, these will be great opportunities to learn more about exciting programs across the city and gain some “how to” at the same time. To see a full listing of the organizations and topics covered, head over to the Connection Seminars listing page.
The Reception: Celebrate and Learn
After the Share Fair, a reception will be held at the ICA, located at 4750 N Sheridan Ave. Come and learn about Chicago’s very own GreenRise and help us celebrate the Institute of Cultural Affairs’ 50th anniversary. To learn more about the GreenRise tours, head over to the GreenRise Tours page.
During the spring semester of 2012, the 20 students in Prof. Mike Bryson’s SUST 210 Sustainable Future honors class conducted a semester-long community-based research project in conjunction with the ICA’s effort during 2011 and 2012 to map and describe as many sustainability initiatives and assets as possible in each one of Chicago’s 77 official Community Areas. Two RU students, international studies major Dylan Amlin and sustainability studies major Ngozi Okoro, pursued summer internships with the ICA by conducting community research in several South Side neighborhoods. As Dylan notes about the Share Fair:
It will be an excellent networking opportunity for students as well, and we could really use some youthful energy in the room. If students are interested in volunteering, they can contact me directly asap (dylanamlin@gmail.com). They also can go to the Accelerate 77 website to learn more about the project and to register.
Join Dylan, Ngozi, and lots of other students, faculty, sustainability professionals, grassroots activists, and area officials for this singular event!
I recently received this intriguing call for papers through email. If you’re a young and aspiring writer and have an interest in the natural environment, sustainability issues, and related subjects, check this out!
In the prescient 1988 book, The End of Nature, Bill McKibben forecast the end of a primordial relationship between humans and the untrammeled earth. Evidence abounds that our ancient connections with the home planet have irrevocably altered. What happens to individuals and societies when their most fundamental cultural, historical, and ecological bonds attenuate—or snap? How do the young, especially, cope in a baffling and mutable new world? “When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit,” wrote Henry Beston, “man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw. . . .” It is vital that we hear from members of the generation who have grown up on the new earth, who can express their challenges, fears, dreams, and sources of resilience for living and thriving as cosmic outlaws.
Co-editors Julie Dunlap and Susan A. Cohen are soliciting submissions for an anthology tentatively titled, “Cosmic Outlaws: Coming of Age after the End of Nature.” Submissions are invited from young writers, born in 1982 or later. We are interested in essays, short fiction, and poetry that explore themes including (but not limited to) growing up in a warming climate, accepting biodiversity decline, defining responsible consumption, understanding the relevance of wilderness, interpreting moralities of resource allocation, new views of urban design, sustainability, and environmental justice, technological optimism or pessimism, environmental heroes for the future, and sources of joy in a diminished place.
Julie Dunlap is co-editor of Companions in Wonder: Children and Adults Exploring Nature Together (MIT Press, 2012) and an award-winning author of children’s books, articles, and essays about nature, science, and environmental history. Susan A. Cohen (formerly Susan A. C. Rosen) is co-editor of Wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental, and Place-Based Writing (University of Utah Press, 2010), editor of Shorewords: A Collection of American Women’s Coastal Writings (University of Virginia Press, 2003), professor of English at Anne Arundel Community College, and the author of numerous essays on American literature and the environment.
Please submit materials electronically (.doc or .rtf files only for essays and fiction – .pdf files will be accepted for poetry) by December 31, 2012, along with contact information and a one-paragraph author bio. We will accept essays & fiction up to 4,000 words (one per contributor) and up to three poems per person. Please submit copies of your work to both of the e-mail addresses below. If you must submit by mail, please send TWO double-spaced copies to both addresses below. We will be reading and selecting pieces in early 2013. We are happy to accept simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you please notify us if your submission is accepted elsewhere.
Send your work to:
Julie Dunlap: juliejdunlap@earthlink.net (6371 Tinted Hill, Columbia, MD 21045)
Susan A. Cohen: sacohen3@aacc.edu (40 Johnson Road, Pasadena, MD 21122)
Thank you. We look forward to reading your essays, stories, and poems!
This weekend I’m at Santa Clara University in California’s Silicon Valley at one of my favorite professional conferences: the annual gathering of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences. Like the literature and environmental folks I hang out with at ASLE‘s biannual conferences, these folks in AESS are my professional tribe: educators, students, writers, scientists, and activists working on every conceivable kind of issue or project related to environmental education and sustainability. (In fact, I’m struck by how pervasive a theme sustainability has become at the AESS conferences, despite the fact that it is not explicitly a part of the organization’s name or identity).
Santa Clara University
This morning I’m part of a presentation panel entitled “Ethics of Place in Urban Areas,” which was organized by my colleague and friend Gavin Van Horn of the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago. Here he describes the context, themes, and over-arching issues our panel addresses:
Place has become a topic of increasing scholarly attention and research. Place is particularly relevant to environmental studies and environmental sciences, because place provides a spatial anchor of memory and meaning in which care for the natural world is fostered. Most work in moral philosophy and Western ethics is abstract in the sense that it seeks to discover standards of right and wrong that are universally valid and applicable. Paradoxically, moral psychology tells us that ethical thinking and our sense of value are rooted in the lived experience in a specific place, with specific natural and social characteristics, landscapes, and cultures. The session panelists submit that an ethics of place which roots our ethical obligations more concretely and locally is essential for a more robust environmental future. We examine the ways in which ethics might be re-envisioned to include a respect for complexity and multiplicity of place in an urban context.
Our presentations integrate urban agriculture and alternative economies, landscape aesthetics, urban water quality, environmental education, and the ethics of care to discuss the ways in which place can inform an ecological ethic that is democratic and participatory in its orientation. Our approach is rooted in the disciplines of geography, political science and bioethics, religious studies and ethics, urban ecology, and sustainability studies. While addressing conceptual and ideological questions about the ethics of place, we profile on-the-ground case studies and relevant research from each panelist’s community-based work. Our goal is to engage audience members in a dialogue about how scholars and citizens can better understand how to cultivate respect for and engagement with nature in metropolitan areas – spaces frequently misunderstood as un-conducive to an ethics of place.
Photo by Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee (2010)
My presentation, “Exploring the Chicago River: Ethics, Sustainability, and a Sense of Place” (view pdf of slideshow) looks at this waterway/ecosystem as one key manifestation of urban nature in Chicago. I explore how scientific and artistic engagement with the river can contribute to one’s sense of not just the river’s history, ecology, and identity, but also that of Chicago in particular and watersheds more generally. As my abstract notes,
The degraded yet undeniably charismatic urban waterway, the Chicago River, is a mighty fine place to contemplate the tangled relationships among water quality, land use, and sustainability within cities and suburbs. As a site for exploring urban nature, an object of analysis in the scientific assessment of water quality and urban ecology, and a case-study in landscape aesthetics, the Chicago river provides students and citizens myriad opportunities to develop a sense of place. More generally, experiencing urban rivers — and understanding their function within the complex watersheds of metropolitan regions — can foster not just ecological literacy about urban ecosystems but also ethical engagement with one’s community.
This past Saturday, I attended GR2012, the 3rd annual Celebrating Sustainability festival in my hometown of Joliet, IL. The past couple of years I had attended with my family purely in the role of visitors to the festival’s original location at the Joliet Public Library / Rock Run Forest Preserve. We checked out the many green products and services among the many exhibits, played games, petted a menagerie of animals, and listened to live music.
RU students (Stephanie and Sean) hobnob with JJC students and alumni (Tiffany, Tori, and Antonio)
But the festival outgrew its site in only two years, so this year’s organizers moved it to more spacious grounds: the West Side campus of Joliet Junior College, which has a beautiful new student center as well as a picnic area near the site of a significant prairie restoration underway at the nation’s oldest community college. And this time, I came as a participant: along with SUST majors Sean Hattan and Stephanie Eisner, I ran an informational table among the dozens of exhibitors at GR2012 to meet and greet visitors and prospective students. And I gave a slideshow presentation entitled Sustainability in the Suburbs – GR2012 19 May 2012 (pdf) during the day’s program of public lectures.
For more on the day’s proceedings, check out this post on the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future blog.
