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环境研究课程

的 环境研究 major at Wesleyan is highly interdisciplinary, reflecting the importance of the “triple bottom line” to sustainability efforts: people, 利润, 和地球. Our majors in 环境研究 immerse themselves in courses in the sciences, 艺术与人文, and the social sciences/professional studies; finally, their studies culminate in an integrative senior project in which they pull together their understanding of diverse disciplines. A minor in Environmental Science, with more of a scientific focus on environmental issues, 12博官方网站也提供.

环境研究 students at Wesleyan are at the forefront of real-world sustainability issues on campus. 例如, they help manage the college community garden, spearhead recycling and composting efforts, monitor carbon storage by the campus tree canopy, and participate in other sustainability efforts on campus. Students also play a vital role in maintaining the 104-acre 12博官方网站学院植物园, our own living laboratory for education, research, conservation, and recreation. 的y volunteer to remove invasive plant species, 搭建长椅和桥梁, 维持轨迹, plant native shrubs and wildflowers, and help the college community celebrate the outdoors in our annual PioneerFest, held in the 植物园 each November.

Nature-Smart Curriculum/Educational Outreach

For decades scholars and practitioners have been 写作 about and practicing what Richard Louv calls a nature-smart curriculum. But the publication in 2005 of Louv’s book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder" set in motion a world-wide movement to reclaim the child’s place in nature as an inherent right. A nature-smart curriculum recognizes the irresistible connection that children feel for the green world, when given the opportunity to do so. Thousands of generations of human children learned survival and coping skills in this first “classroom” of our species. We are the inheritors of these children that applied those lessons well…and survived.

In the Wesleyan Education Department these nature-smart principles are an integral part of our preparation work for the Early Childhood Education major. Students begin this study in EDS 114 "Understanding Learning" where they are introduced to the evolutionary and experiential basis of nature - smart learning. This culminates in an all day field trip to the Wesleyan 植物园 where they have an encounter with Mother Nature herself. This course prepares them for the more in-depth EDS 313 "Children, Nature and Society" where through reading, 写作, research and experience they probe the deeper causes of our alienation from the natural world and possible remedies, especially as they apply to schooling.

的 Education Department is also working with Woodfield Academy, a nearby school for children with cognitive and developmental disorders, to develop a nature-smart curriculum. Woodfield老师, administrators and board members have taken professional development coursework at Wesleyan and are prepared to rebrand their school as the first nature-smart school in Middle Georgia.

Wesleyan’s nature-smart educational outreach also has extended to other schools and groups in the form of extended field trips in the 植物园, adult education classes in ornithology and nature study and field biology. Our 100 acre 植物园 is listed on the Morton Registry of Arboreta and is a biologically and topographically rich educational setting that is open to our college community and limited public use.