Sustainability
Freshman Inquiry
March 10, 2010
Jeff Fletcher
Logistics, Follow-up
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Follow-up
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Dance this Thursday, March 11, 7- 10pm in
the Ballroom
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FRINQ Race and Social Justice fundraiser for
Mercy Corps for relief efforts in Haiti.
There is an $8.00 cover charge. All proceeds will
go to Mercy Corps
Final Reflection Essay
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Further comments on midterm
A Few Comments on Capitalism and Collapse
Due Friday by 5pm
Box in UNST, on shelf to right, just inside door
Mentor Session: End of term survey
Retrospective
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Things to be improved winter quarter
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Class participation (instructor, students)
Develop speaking skills & active class participation
Time management—readings and assignments on time
Reading assignment handouts more carefully
Clearer expectations on assignments, more helpful feedback
More personal interest in student learning
More interactive, hands-on
Diversity awareness (race, class, gender, sexual orientation,
ethnicity)
More sharing of different backgrounds
Better integration with mentor session
More activities taking advantage of the fact that you live on
campus, mostly same floor
Learning Activities
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Carbon Footprint Report (with draft)
Field Notes from a Catastrophe take-home essay exam
Annotated Bibliography for your focal society (Collapse chapter)
Final group presentation on Collapse
Homework Essays
– HW1 Sustainability Autobiography (draft of first paragraph, minimize “to
be” verbs)
– HW2 Bad/Good Apples (sharing in mentor session)
– HW3 Changing Recycling Behavior
– HW4 Assessing the Impact of a Paper (Criticisms of Collapse)
– Extra Credit
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PSU Recycles project for Broadway and Ondine
Watching and discussing Frontline Heat and The Story of Stuff
Library visit
Guest lecture from Dr. Barbara Brower on the Himalayans
Other participation assignments including quizzes, reading questions,
Tragedy of the Commons exercise, graphing and statistics on rain word
data, Stabilization Wedge Game, etc..
Some Specific Learning Objectives
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Sustainability Issues
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Natural Cycles—water, carbon, nitrogen, etc.
Atmospheric composition, Greenhouse Gas Theory
Political (but not Sci.) climate change controversy
Sources and sinks of CO2 and other gases
Difficulties of societal decisions, Equity and Fairness Issues, Exploitation of Power
Stabilization Wedges
Ecocide and criticisms of Collapse; Difficulties in understanding past societies
Psychology of happiness and consumerism (does stuff make us happy?)
Basic skills
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Writing/Reading
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Discussion skills
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Understanding scientific evidence in terms of statistics; webpage design, start portfolios; basic
modeling, algorithmic thinking, logic, programming?
Understanding Systems Ideas (meta level)
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Trying out ideas, helping others develop their ideas, honest but polite feedback, avoiding logical
fallacies
Quantitative/Technology
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Awareness of audience, consistent voice and tense, thesis statement and supporting evidence, use of
citations and evaluating source reliability, Critical reading
Social Dilemmas (Tragedy of the Commons, Prisoner’s Dilemma), Simpson’s paradox
Carrying capacity, More on feedbacks
Chaos theory, unpredictability of complex systems (butterfly effect); Catastrophe theory,
irreversibility
Free market, How we decide what is best (maximizing greatest good, Pareto optimal, max
GDP, etc.)
All of this in the context of improving on four main University Studies Learning Goals
Preview of Next Term
• Focus on:
– Economics, Energy, Consumerism
– Environmental Movement and Solutions
– The Positive, Hopeful Activities of Citizens
• Habits of a Systems Thinker
Main Texts
• Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's
Long, Strange Trip to Your
Tank
– by Lisa Margonelli (2008)
• Blessed Unrest: How the Largest
Social Movement in History Is
Restoring Grace, Justice, and
Beauty to the World
– by Paul Hawken (2008)
HAVE A GREAT BREAK!!