Category: Sustainability

Internship Opportunity at Alliance for a Greener South Loop

Looking for a cool sustainability-themed internship opportunity here in downtown Chicago? Want to hone your research and writing skills in a professional context, while furthering the progressive goals of a local environmental organization? The Alliance for a Greener South Loop (AGSL), an environmental advocacy non-profit dedicated to improving and encouraging green practices in the South Loop neighborhood of Chicago, is seeking an intern this winter/spring to work on the following:

  • Research/document local resources to support green efforts (e.g., buying electricity in Illinois’s open market)
  • Writing up best practices locally (business, residential, and/or institutional) using input from AGSL award applications and further research as needed
  • Answering questions received by residents, organizations, and companies about green practices such as green roof planning/installation, wind turbines, and composting
  • Generating community engagement through developing online surveys about, for example, green purchasing attitudes and patterns about paper, electricity, etc.
  • Developing ideas to support individual and collective behavioral change and creating a voice to influence local policy decisions related to sustainability

Application Deadline: 1 February 2012

Internship Requirements:

The application process for this internship is competitive, as strong writing, research, time management, and deadline-meeting skills are a must. Knowledge about current environmental issues and sustainability practices (such as those covered in RU’s SUST curriculum) is important, as well. Experience analyzing data and/or developing information for websites is desirable, though not required. Current RU undergraduates may apply; preference is given to Sustainability Studies majors. Applicants should have sophomore standing, at least one SUST course with a grade of B or better, and a minimum cumulative 3.0 GPA.

Workload / Hours / Academic Requirements:

The selected intern will be supervised by Ms. Gail Merritt of the AGSL, with academic support/direction by Professor Mike Bryson in the Sustainability Studies program. The basic work requirement is a minimum of 10 hours per week for twelve weeks (120 hours total) of on-task work at the AGSL, some of which may be completed off-site (depending upon the intern’s school/work schedule). Other requirements include submitting weekly timesheets to the on-site supervisor and faculty instructor; holding 2-3 meetings with the instructor to discuss the progress of the internship; keeping an informal weekly journal of notes and reflections summarizing that week’s work; and submitting a final research paper (7-10pp) that synthesizes reflections on the internship experience within the context of a sustainability issue(s) of particular interest to the student.

This internship is unpaid but may be taken for SUST 350 course credit (Service & Sustainability, 3sh, pre-req ENG 102). SUST majors may use this class as a major requirement, relevant elective, or general elective; non-majors may use it as elective credit. The successful applicant may register for SUST 350 as a “course by arrangement” for the Spring, Summer, or Fall 2012 semesters. Regardless, the internship would begin in early February, 2012.

Application Deadline: 1 February 2012

To apply, send an email application to Professor Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu) that includes the following:

  • Your name, contact information, student ID, RU major, and previously completed SUST courses (semester and grade noted)
  • Personal statement indicating your interest in the internship experience (500 words max)
  • Work availability (days/times), assuming a ten-hour/week commitment with flexible scheduling possible
  • A writing sample of two graded RU essays, with class/instructor/date noted (attached to your email as Word or PDF documents)

For More Information

Contact Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu; 312.281.3148 office; 815.557.3153 cell) and/or check out the Alliance for a Greener South Loop website.

Debut of the Water in Schaumburg Project

This past fall semester, students in my Sustainability Studies 220 Water seminar at Roosevelt University’s Schaumburg Campus collaborated on a semester-long research endeavor, the Water in Schaumburg Project. Small groups of students researched water resource issues related to water supply, wastewater treatment, wetlands, and the Salt Creek watershed — all within the context of the Village of Schaumburg and surrounding communities. They wrote essays, gathered images, and collected/annotated internet resources on their four key topics; and after synthesizing and editing their work, I uploaded it to the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future website — a collaborative endeavor that originated in the spring of 2011 with my SUST 210 Sustainable Future class.

Congratulations to the members of SUST 220 for their hard work on this project! And coming up in spring 2012 — a transportation-focused project from my online SUST 210 class.

SUST 350 Course Preview for Spring 2012

This coming spring semester I will be offering the inaugural section of SUST 350 Service and Sustainability at the Chicago Campus. The specific course theme is  Urban Farming, Community Development, and Social Justice.

  • Title/number: SUST 350 Service and Sustainability (section L10)
  • Semester offered: Spring 2012 (initial offering)
  • Campus: Chicago
  • Day/time: Wed 3-5:30pm
  • Pre-req: UWR
  • Text: Lorraine Johnson, City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing (Greystone, 2010, paper, ISBN 9781554655190) — on order at the RU bookstore

SUST majors and minors may take this class to fulfill an upper-level SUST requirement, but 350 also is open to students at large who need a general education course or desire elective credit.

Introduction to the Course

SUST 350 focuses on one of sustainability’s “Three Es” — social Equity — within the broad context of Environmental stewardship and Economic development.  Students will learn about one of the most important components of sustainability — food production and consumption — in the context of urban neighborhoods and ecosystems.

Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)

By doing hands-in-the-dirt labor at Chicago Lights Urban Farm on the city’s near-North Side, students will gain direct knowledge of contemporary organic/urban agricultural systems as well as learn about pressing urban social justice issues such as food deserts, gentrification, pollution, environmental racism, and persistent poverty. Initial class meetings through February will be at RU’s Chicago Campus, while subsequent class meetings will take place at the farm.

Once established at the farm site in mid-March, Roosevelt students will work side-by-side with Cabrini-Green neighborhood youth in a unique reciprocal learning opportunity. Participants in the Chicago Lights Youth Corps program (14-21 age range) work as job trainees at the farm 9 hours/week during the school year and 20 hours/week during the summer.

Compost Bins at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)

They acquire skills in urban agricultural production (composting, soil management, seedbed planning, hydroponics, organic pest management, harvesting, etc.) and economy (packaging, marketing, distribution, and sales). To the extent that Roosevelt students are newcomers to these activities, they will be learning skills from the Youth Corps kids as well as from the urban farming experts.

An urban farm is about food, but so much more besides. The Cabrini-Green community is an economically stressed neighborhood that has gone through dramatic and wrenching changes as high-rise public housing has been demolished, residents have been displaced within and without the community, and gentrification proceeds at a rapid pace — even as crime and poverty persist. Here, an urban farm is a source of freshly grown, organic produce; a training ground for local youth in need of practical job skills; a stop valve in the Cradle-to-Prison pipeline; a gathering place for people of all ages in the community for physical exercise, informal education, and social events (such as the annual Fall Harvest Festival held on-site); a demonstration site for sustainable agricultural techniques; a model of economic development on a local, sustainable scale; and a means of reconnecting urban folk to the natural world. More generally, in urban areas starved for jobs, green space, safe outdoor gathering places, and fresh quality food, these small-scale farms productively and powerfully address the need for social equity and progressive change.

Partner Organizations: Chicago Lights Urban Farm and Growing Power

The Chicago Lights Urban Farm is one wing of the Chicago Lights Community Outreach Organization on Chicago’s near-North Side, and is located at 444 W. Chicago Avenue, the south end of the Cabrini-Green neighborhood.

Cabrini-Green row houses as seen from the north edge of the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)

Formerly known as the Chicago Avenue Community Garden, it began in 2003 as a modest collection of raised-bed planters covering the cracked blacktop of an abandoned basketball playground. Since then, the farm has expanded and diversified its operations with the help of Growing Power, a nationally-recognized urban farm initiative based in Milwaukee that has established satellite operations in several Chicago neighborhoods (including Cabrini-Green, Altgeld Gardens, Grant Park South, and Bridgeport). The mission of the farm is to “empower . . . youth and community residents in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood to have increased economic opportunities through access to organic produce, nutritional education, and work force training” (Chicago Lights “Urban Farm”).

Field Trips in Urban Ecology

SUST 350 Service and Sustainability provides an ideal context for field-based learning experiences that connect progressive social/environmental action to sustainable community development. While the Chicago Lights Urban Farm itself is a quintessential example of such a field experience, a selection of well-planned day trips to other sites will broaden that learning experience for RU students as well as provide a rare opportunity for the farm’s Youth Corps participants to leave the confines of their home neighborhood, see other parts of the region they have little to no familiarity with, deepen their understanding of urban ecology, and personally connect with the varied and surprisingly engaging forms of the region’s urban nature. In this expression of reciprocal learning, RU undergrads and Youth Corps students will be learning together in the context of adventurous new experiences, a process necessitating team-work and producing a profound sense of personal accomplishment.

Planned field trips tentatively include a tour of urban farms sites in Chicago, the Growing Power flagship farm in Milwaukee, the South Branch of the Chicago River, and/or the Indiana Dunes. See this page for accounts of recent student field trips in my SUST courses.

Watersheds, Carp, and the Future of Chicago’s Water

On Thursday, Oct. 13th, I took some time away from my normal professorial duties to attend a lunchtime forum entitled “Chicago’s Water: Protecting Our Precious Resource,” sponsored by the Chicago Council on Science and Technology. The event was held in the 18th floor “Wolf Point Ballroom” in the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza, literally right off that parking lot that sits on Wolf Point. Floor to ceiling views of the Chicago River and the skyline made for a dramatic setting for the event and the ensuing conversation about the history and future of water management in Chicago.

Combined Sewage Outfall on the Chicago River, in the Loop (M. Bryson)

I couldn’t help but notice the remarkably clear view of the Combined Sewage Outfall (CSO) location where my students and I rafted up our canoes the previous weekend in the Loop and discussed the impact of stormwater overflows of untreated wastewater on the ecology of the Chicago River. It was both odd and inspiring to view that location from up high, only a few days later.

This exceptionally interesting forum featured a keynote address by Debra Shore, an Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioner who, unlike most commissioners past and present, actually has a long track record in environmental conservation and advocacy. She is one of the drivers of the recent turnaround in MWRD policy with respect to the disinfection of wastwater. Shore’s presentation highlighted the history of Chicago’s development and its relation to the river, the technological changes that have been wrought upon the latter, the key issues facing us in the 21st century (water quality, Asian Carp, hydrological separation, etc.), and a broad question at the end: “Can Chicago become Nature’s Metropolis for the 21st Century?” In the latter, she implied that how we manage the river will be a large part of the answer to that question.

Shore’s keynote was followed by an immensely interesting panel discussion moderated by Howard Learner, an attorney who runs the Environmental Law and Policy Center (a local environmental think-tank and non-profit). The panelists included Tinka Hyde, acting director of the USEPA Region 5’s water division; Andrew Richardson, an wastewater engineer and CEO of Greeley and Hanson; and Martin Felsen, a principal architect at the UrbanLab design firm and professor at IIT who specializes in the design of green infrastructure in urban environments.

One key theme that repeatedly came up during the forum’s dialogue was the notion of separating the watersheds as a way to improve water conservation and prevent invasive species (notably the carp) from entering the GLs. Surprisingly, none of the engineers on the panel or in the audience claimed that such a separation was technically impossible, or even too costly to attempt. What they repeatedly cited was the need for the political will and creation of effective avenues of communication and collaboration to do it. If that happened, then the technology could be brought to bear productively. This view was even espoused by Dick Lanyon, the longtime engineer for and then manager of the MWRD who retired in 2010 and who was at this meeting (coincidentally, I sat next to him and got to bend his ear for several minutes after the program). Lanyon is a key source about water management in the Chicago region in Peter Annin’s 2006 book, The Great Lakes Water Wars .

Another issue that was discussed was the status of the current studies underway to assess the feasibility and impacts of hydrological separation. The Army Corps of Engineers’ study was cited several times, favorably, despite it’s rather slow projected timeline that has raised the pique of neighboring Great Lakes states; and Tinka Hyde, the EPA rep, noted that USEPA was collaborating with the Corps on this process.

One vision of how the hydrology of the Chicago Region might be transformed by re-separating the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds (Milwaukee Journal-Star)

No mention of the long timeline was made. Neither was the parallel and comparatively fast-track study by the Michigan-based Great Lakes Commission even mentioned. I was going to ask a question about this in the Q-and-A period, but the panel ran out of time since there was so much discussion after the formal presentations.

Those interested in following up on the status of the GLC’s planning process, as well as learning more about the environmental and ecological prospects of hydrologically separating the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds can read more about it here and/or attend a public webinar  on Oct. 24th for the GLC’s Chicago Area Waterway Study.

An Agricultural Landscape Adventure

Angelic Organics Farm, Caledonia, IL (photo by L. Bryson)

This past Sunday, July 10th, students in my PLS 392 Seminar in Humanities online summer course at Roosevelt University took an “agricultural landscapes” field trip to north-central Illinois, near the city of Rockford and just south of the Illinois-Wisconsin border. Such an adventure might seem an odd outing for a class like ours, which focuses on “representations of the urban landscape.” However, as the environmental historian William Cronon argues in his prologue to Nature’s Metropolis (1991), the city and country exist in a symbiotic relation, one defining the other in a dance of mutual dependence. And given the continued importance of farming in the otherwise heavily urbanized six-county Chicago region, we found it appropriate to explore northeastern Illinois’ remaining agricultural lands and to think about the shape and character of these lands and their relation to the city.

Enter Angelic Organics Farm, an organic community supported agriculture (CSA) operation based in Caledonia, IL. Angelic Organics was founded in the early 1990s by John Peterson, whose family had farmed this land since purchasing it in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The Learning Center's pavilion (photo by L. Bryson)

Peterson’s colorful history as a soul-searching farmer, writer, performance artist, and philosopher is the subject of the fascinating 2006 documentary film, The Real Dirt on Farmer John. The Angelic Organics Learning Center provides public tours and a wide variety of educational programs to teach visitors the craft of sustainable agricultural and its vital connection to the stewardship of nature. This farm is a living classroom where visitors observe how local diverse agricultural traditions thrive in our age of mega-industrial monocultural croplands and large-scale animal confinement operations.

Our tour guide on Sunday was April, an instructor at the Learning Center with a background in outdoor education and natural history. She led us on a two-hour walk around the grounds of the 180+ acre site and introduced us to the methods of vegetable production as well as animal husbandry employed on this diversified farm. Along the way, her narrative gave us a sense of how the ideas and philosophy behind such a farm are as important as the technical knowledge and hard physical labor that keep it going.

The farm has 30 acres under cultivation at any one time (photo by L. Bryson)

While there was only minimal active work being done on the farm that day (mostly the daily tending of animals), we did get a chance to inspect the many acres of vegetable fields up close and personal; pick some beets and basil; take home a broccoli flat or two; see the newborn baby bull frolic with his mother in a bucolic pasture; and hang out with the goats and chickens in their pens.

What one takes away from such an extraordinary opportunity to tour a working organic farm depends upon, in part, one’s background and connection to agriculture. Those in our group ranged from city folk like me with little to no experience working or living on farms, to those who grew up on farms or visited them frequently as children. For several people in our class, this represented their first time ever setting foot on a working farm. In that context, the opportunity to see where food comes from — what it looks like and how it’s grown in the fields — is a remarkably eye-opening experience.

Good Illinois soil is mighty productive (photo by L. Bryson)

For those familiar with conventional agriculture in the Midwest, the seemingly unending fields of corn and soybeans destined to be processed into a myriad of industrial agricultural products (from corn syrup to ethanol to animal feed), Angelic Organics is a throw-back to an earlier age when farms were diverse. And for those who garden small plots in their yards, the long orderly rows of perfectly cultivated vegetables — kale, lettuce, fennel, garlic, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet corn, beets, and much more –represent a staggering achievement of scale using labor-intensive growing methods.

In such a neo-traditional model, dozens of different vegetables are grown in a well-orchestrated crop rotation in which fields are rested two out of every four years so that the soil is replenished; different types of crops are planted on a given plot of land, so as to avoid excessive nutrient depletion; animal waste is composted and used to fertilize the soil; hand labor and the intelligent use of technology is used to mitigate against pests and avoid the use of chemicals in protecting plants.

A recently born calf and its mother (photo by L. Bryson)

I say “neo-traditional” because while Angelic Organics, as the largest CSA farm in the Midwest, is at the cutting edge of contemporary farming, it also is a throwback to the time before World War Two when most American farms were family-run, highly diversified operations that used animals to produce eggs, cheese, milk, and meat; rotated crops and pastureland to maintain soil fertility; and recycled key elements of the farm — grass and manure — in a closed-loop ecosystem.

Angelic Organics, like other CSA operations, is a great place to contemplate the connection of farm to city. The idea of a CSA — where citizens purchase shares in a farm in advance of the growing season in order to help finance the farm’s operation, then receive a weekly box of harvested produce throughout the summer and/or fall — is a method of food production in which the farmer sells directly to the consumer and the purchaser feels an economic, social, and even physical connection to the farm.

Lily, age 9, crossing a field (photo by L. Bryson)

This sort of social contract is a strong element of Angelic Organics’ method and identity, and it connects this part of rural Illinois to urban residents in Rockford, Chicago, Schaumburg, and several other urban and suburban communities where the farm delivers its CSA share boxes to customers.

Another means of connection is the farm itself, which has developed its own education and public outreach programs through the Angelic Organics Learning Center. Here people can travel from cities, suburbs, and small towns to see a working Illinois organic farm in action, where all its operations are visible to the public and various kinds of skills and traditions (making soap, baking bread, tending animals) are taught in family-oriented programs. CSA members can also come to the farm and pick their own produce, a privilege that encourages them to think of the place as “their farm” — something they have ownership of in a very literal way.

The two Esmés (photo by L. Bryson)

This kind of welcoming attitude which defines many small-scale CSA farms stands in stark contrast to the industrial mega-farms and confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that bar visitors, reporters, and cameras from their premises — a common practice depicted in recent agricultural documentaries such as Food, Inc.

For our group from Roosevelt University, the visit to the Angelic Organics Learning Center was a transformative experience. Students gained a much deeper appreciation of the work, planning, and creativity that go into a sustainable farm operation; and we were impressed by the aesthetics of the farmland and the sense of place it engenders within the rural landscape. A few students brought their children, as I did, and they were excited to learn about the crops and animals. Future Roosevelt field trips to this agricultural haven are definitely in the works!

Attending the 2011 ASLE Conference

Tomorrow I head down to Bloomington, Indiana, to participate in one of my favorite professional conferences — the biannual meeting of ASLE, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. As a scholar whose work straddles the humanities and natural sciences, and as someone teaching in RU’s newly-developed Sustainability Studies program, I’m always delighted to attend this energetic and intellectually-stimulating gathering of writers, teachers, scholars, artists, and activists. All of them are committed to advancing the cause of environmentalism, but from a myriad of perspectives and methods. Plus, we always manage to take a good field trip or two in between the formal conference proceedings.

This year’s ASLE meeting is hosted by Indiana University, and my journey this week will mark my first visit to that university as well as to Bloomington — another reason I’m looking forward to the adventure.

Indiana University's campus in Bloomington, IN

I’m very familiar with the “other Bloomington” of the Midwest — the one in Illinois where I went to college at Illinois Wesleyan University and which I still visit periodically with my family — but I’ve always had a notion to see this much-touted community that was the setting for the wonderful 1979 film, Breaking Away.

I’m taking part in a roundtable-style panel entitled “Sustainability Education: Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Approaches” that includes faculty participants from colleges and universities all across the US. My fellow panelists are presenting on topics ranging from teaching sustainability and literature in Appalachia, to designing interdisciplinary courses on climate change, to the creation of a sustainability blog that showcases student writing and art, to exploring ways in which sustainability can be infused throughout the general education curriculum for undergraduates.

My own presentation focuses on the new Sustainability Studies (SUST) program here at Roosevelt University. The program grew out of an experimental course on urban sustainability I team-taught back in the spring of 2009, an experience described in an essay from the July 2010 issue of Metropolitan Universities. As a new undergraduate degree housed in Roosevelt’s College of Professional Studies, the nascent SUST program just finished its third semester and has approximately 25 majors enrolled at Roosevelt’s two campuses (Chicago and Schaumburg, IL) and taking online courses. The curriculum’s core is a series of interdisciplinary courses that integrate the natural and social sciences with the humanities and address key issues and themes such as water; food; waste; biodiversity; energy and climate change; sprawl and transportation; and policy and ethics.

Three things strike me about our program as relevant to this panel’s discussion of sustainability education. The first is the institutional context in which our program emerged at RU, since many colleges and universities are considering ways to incorporate sustainability into their curriculum, whether as new ways to teach existing courses or in the shape of new courses and/or programs. In our case at Roosevelt, the university had some “vacant land” within the undergraduate curriculum which provided us with an opportunity to propose and develop this new major. While RU has well-established programs in biology and chemistry, there were no majors in environmental policy, studies, or science. My home college has an entrepreneurial orientation, and thus the development of the SUST curriculum received strong in-house support from our dean. It was favorably received by university-wide faculty committees, as well, in part because we took pains to show how the program was meant to complement existing science programs, rather than compete/conflict with them. By developing solid cross-college relationships with faculty colleagues in biology, chemistry, environmental science, math, and business, we hope to engage in future collaborations on many levels. One promising example of this is that SUST faculty were invited to participate in the current revamping of RU’s environmental science minor.

A second observation is how sustainability education contributes to an institution’s overall work to improve its physical operations and thus serve as a model of a sustainable community (a process I describe in my “Sustaining Sustainability” essay circulated previously). We at RU are behind many other US colleges and universities (such as Dickinson College, as chronicled by Professor Ashton Nichols), but we have become galvanized recently around a common goal of improving the sustainability of our two campuses and connecting this improvement as much as possible to our teaching, research, and service-learning activities. In this respect, sustainability education — whatever form it takes in a particular institution — can be an powerful force in getting people (from college administrators to alumni to community members) to see the ethical importance and economic benefits of reducing resource use, reducing waste, recycling materials, conserving water and energy, fostering local food production, and educating eco-literate citizens.

Lastly, there’s the transformative potential of technology, field experiences, and service-learning for sustainability education, all of which are exciting areas of inquiry and experimentation that can revitalize our teaching and stoke the inherent enthusiasm we’ve observed in our students for the ideas and practical applications of sustainability. In line with the College of Professional Studies’ tradition of serving adult / non-traditional learners (quite often parents juggling work, family, and school), we use technology to offer courses in a mix of formats — face to face, fully online, hybrid, and weekend — a course delivery approach which, though challenging to manage, greatly increases student access to our program. Just as significantly, our Sustainability Studies @ Roosevelt University blog, authored and maintained by my colleague Carl Zimring, serves triple duty as a teaching resource, marketing tool, and go-to news source about environmental issues impacting the Chicago region.

Another key feature of the SUST curriculum is its emphasis on field experiences to supplement classroom and online instruction. In my SUST 210 Sustainable Future and SUST 220 Water courses, as well as other classes, I take students out to various sites in the city and suburbs where they can talk with experts, gather and analyze empirical data, examine innovations in sustainable design and planning, and engage community members in environmental/social justice issues. Recent field trip sites have included the Chicago Center for Green Technology, the Field Museum of Natural History’s zoology collection and laboratories, the Chicago Wilderness “Wild Things” biannual environmental conference at University of Illinois at Chicago, the Chicago River, and local nature preserves and restoration sites. Many students describe these trips as powerfully transformative experiences that introduce them to places they never knew existed, educate them about social and environmental problems in a way no course reading or lecture could, and dramatically shift their perceptions about the status and potential of urban natural resources.

Closely connected to these field experiences are the service-learning activities we are currently engaged in as well as planning for the future. These run the gamut from students in our SUST 330 Biodiversity class working side-by-side with Field Museum scientists analyzing data and cataloguing specimens, to SUST 230 Food students contributing their labor to local urban farms. Service-learning is the explicit focus of SUST 350 Service & Sustainability, a course I will debut next spring as “Urban Farming, Community Development, and Social Justice.” Students here will learn about one of the most important components of sustainability, food production and consumption, in the context of urban neighborhoods and ecosystems. By doing hands-in-the-dirt labor at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm operation in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood, they will gain direct knowledge of modern organic/urban agricultural systems as well as learn about pressing urban social justice issues such as food deserts, gentrification, pollution, environmental racism, and persistent poverty.

SUST 220 Water — Fall Preview

This coming fall semester, SUST 220 Water will be offered for the first time at RU’s Schaumburg Campus. The 12-week course will run in a unique “hybrid” format combining four Saturday meetings (from 10am to 4pm) with online interaction via the course Blackboard site during the intervening weeks. This weekend/hybrid schedule not only makes the course accessible to students in the suburbs as well as the city, it provides us with the opportunity to pursue some interesting water-focused field trips to instructive sites in the region, such as the Chicago River (which just received this good news about its future water quality) and the Des Plaines River Wetland Demonstration Project (just to mention a couple of places I have taken past classes).

RU students & faculty canoe the Chicago River, May 2009 (photo by B. Hunt)

Course Profile / Registration Info

  • SUST 220 Water, section L30 (Schaumburg Campus) / Fall 2011
  • Meeting dates: Sept 10th, Oct 8th, Oct 29th, and Dec 3rd
  • Pre-req: English 101
  • Online interaction required through RU Online / Blackboard
  • Taught by: Professor Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu / 847.619.8735)

These books are on order at the RU bookstore:

Recommended but not required is an excellent text I used last year in the augural section of SUST 220 — The Atlas of Water, by Maggie Black and Jannet King (Univ of CA Press, 2nd ed., 2009).

If you are interested in enrolling in SUST 220 this coming fall, please contact your academic advisor, and feel free to get in touch with me if you want to learn more about the course. Enrollment is limited, so plenty of personal attention from yours truly is guaranteed. And if you’ve never tried an online course before, taking a hybrid course such as this is a great way to “test the waters,” since students will have ample opportunity to interact with me and each other face-to-face, as well as get help/support with the online component if need be.

Wetlands Research Inc. ecologist Jill Kostel talks about the restoration work underway at the Des Plaines River Wetland Project, April 2009 (photo by M. Bryson)

Like to know more? Below is a preview of the kinds of topics we’ll investigate in SUST 220.

Water, the Stuff of Life

Without water there is no life. Without clean water, human and animal life is vulnerable to catastrophic disease. How, despite population growth and industrial production, can we ensure clean supplies of water for humans and wildlife? This course evaluates water quality and water sustainability issues through the analysis of local, regional, and global issues and case studies.

Consider, for example, the connections between local and regional water issues here in the Chicago area. Chicagoans have the luxury of living on the shores of the world’s greatest repository of fresh surface water, the Great Lakes, a position we regrettably abuse by withdrawing several hundred million gallons of Lake Michigan water every day simply to flush our sewage downstream to Peoria and all points south. By contrast, most communities in northeastern Illinois that lie outside the Great Lakes basin draw their water from surface streams or underground aquifers, sources that are vulnerable to over-use and pollution. According to the 2009 report “Before the Wells Run Dry” by the Chicago-based Metropolitan Planning Council and Openlands, the long-term sustainability of fresh water in Illinois requires much better conservation of these finite resources and improved long-term water supply planning.

: : For more information on local water issues, as well as sustainability events and issues within the Chicago region, be sure to check out the Sustainability Studies @ Roosevelt University Blog, which just reported on a landmark vote on June 7, 2011, by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District to start disinfecting wastewater returned to the Chicago River.

Canoeing highly polluted Bubbly Creek, aka the South Fork of the Chicago River's South Branch (photo by L. Bryson)

A global perspective on water availability reveals far more disturbing realities. The earth is a planet defined by an abundance of water, of which almost 98 percent is salty or brackish. Just over two percent is fresh, and more than two-thirds of that water is locked up in ice sheets, glaciers, and permafrost. Thus, only a tiny fraction of the earth’s water is available to us for drinking, bathing, flushing toilets, growing crops, etc. That finite resource is imperiled by the unsustainable trends of pollution, overuse, waste, and lack of access. In developing countries, about 90 percent of sewage is dumped into rivers without any treatment. Worldwide, polluted rivers transport toxins and excess nutrients to coastal areas, where biological “dead zones” result; from 1995 to 2007, the number of such oceanic dead zones increased by 30 percent. Depending where you look, overconsumption or scarcity is the defining problem. Citizens of the US accustomed to readily available freshwater consume about 100 gallons day per household, on average; while globally, nearly two billion people lack ready access to clean water.

Key concepts and themes addressed in SUST 220 include the science and policy of ensuring a safe water supply; water conservation strategies, particularly in urban areas; wastewater treatment and  watershed management; and wetlands ecology, restoration, and management. Students will develop a thorough understanding of the water cycle and its relation to the sustainability of water systems; understand and assess the importance of water as an environmental as well as cultural resource; learn to define, measure, and sample water quality in a variety of contexts using simple yet effective field-based water chemistry sampling techniques; and evaluate contemporary water management and policy issues, particularly those affecting the waterways of the Chicago region as well as the Great Lakes ecosystem.

Sustainability in Joliet

Here in my hometown of Joliet, Illinois, one of this spring’s biggest events is happening this coming Saturday, May 21st, at the Public Library’s Black Road branch by the Rock Run Forest Preserve. It’s the GR2011 Sustainability Festival, a family-friendly celebration of nature, green technology and innovation, recycling, and environmental conservation.

Volunteers at last year's GR2010 Festival in Joliet

Based on the tremendous and somewhat unexpected success of last year’s inaugural festival, GR2011 should be even bigger and better. And with an impressive line-up of live music as well as local food vendors, the Festival is living proof that that promoting environmentalism and having fun aren’t mutually exclusive pursuits.

Even more importantly, in the year since the Will County Forest Preserve, the Joliet Public Library, Joliet Junior College, and the City of Joliet collaborated on 2010’s festival, the Joliet region has continued to take meaningful steps toward becoming a environmentally progressive and more sustainable community. That movement is part of a larger wellspring of environmental activism throughout the Chicago region, from the inner city to the outer suburbs.

Consider just a few representative examples here at home. Tonight at the Black Road Library is a free screening of the film, “Fresh,” which profiles farmers and food entrepreneurs who have developed creative approaches to sustainable agriculture. The movie is the fourth of weekly screenings leading up to the GR2011 Festival, and the film series has been a refreshing addition to the city’s cultural scene.

JJC greenhouse (photo: Steinkamp Photography / Legat Architects)

Two other key players on the local sustainability scene are JJC and USF, both of which are undertaking a variety of environmental initiatives. I visited JJC on their Earth Day celebration last month, and spoke with several students and faculty who are passionate about environmental stewardship, green design, and sustainable agriculture. The college is emerging as a regional leader in campus greening initiatives, and the faculty there are just starting to collaborate on an exciting new sustainability curriculum.

Meanwhile, USF and the recently-lauded grassroots organization Cool Joliet have broken ground on a community garden along busy Plainfield Road on the city’s near-West Side. The newly-constructed raised beds herald the forthcoming transformation of this neglected vacant lot into a productive green space.

Cool Joliet is also working on a similar garden at nearby Farragut school, which reportedly will be one of several school gardens planned in District 86. This bodes well for the 11,000 children in the district, as such gardens not only beautify school grounds, but also serve as multidisciplinary learning laboratories, points of contact with nature, and much-needed sources of fresh produce.

All these efforts show that sustainability is not just a trendy buzzword or an abstract concept. It’s a practical and fundamentally positive approach to environmental stewardship that foregrounds green entrepreneurship and social justice.

Don’t just read about it here, though. Come to the GR2011 Festival in Joliet on May 21st and see for yourself!

A version of this post, “Festival Celebrates What’s Green,” was published as my monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on May 19th, 2011 (p14).

NU Summit on Sustainability April 1-2

I received word of this upcoming sustainability conference via email. The theme of the gathering is “Environmental Equity in the 21st Century,” and many of the events are free. Majora Carter is a major force these days in urban sustainability and social justice, having started her activist work in the Bronx.

The first annual Northwestern University Summit on Sustainability will be held April 1 & 2 on the Evanston campus. A keynote speech by Majora Carter, a MacArthur “Genius Award” Fellow, will take place on Friday, April 1st from 7 to 9 PM.  The event will continue on April 2nd, with sessions on Policymaking for Environmental Justice; Sustainable Urban Planning; Food as a Lens for Understanding Inequities; Stories of Local Transformation; and Sustainability in Corporations.

Other speakers include:
– Michael Dorsey, assistant professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth
– Mari Gallagher, principal of Mari Gallagher Research and Consulting Group
– Nia Robinson, the former Director of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change (EJCC) Initiative

This event is open to the public.  Find details at http://www.nusos.org/