The Florida Gulf Coast University Colloquium: A Graduation Requirement in Sustainability

Sharon Bevins, Carol Newcomb-Jones, and Peter Blaze Corcoran

Florida Gulf Coast University

Abstract

Florida Gulf Coast University, America's newest, claims as its birthright Guiding Principles and Student Learning Goals to establish ecological responsibility. The University's mission is, in part, to educate for an ecologically literate citizenry in the fragile environment of Southwest Florida. This process includes a course, The University Colloquium: A Sustainable Future, required of all students in all colleges for graduation. The experience is grounded in several American traditions in which education for sustainability is embedded–Native American indigenous perspectives, Deweyian education for experience, American conservation education, and Florida regionalism. This paper describes the founding of Florida Gulf Coast University in the context of emerging acceptance in higher education of moral responsibility to the environment. It explicates the philosophical underpinnings of the course and the methodology by which they are conveyed to students. It closes with a hopeful vision of students accepting the responsibility of ecological literacy with a sense of both humility and individual efficacy.

Into this inchoate American awareness of the social and moral responsibility of tertiary education to create sustainability, Florida Gulf Coast University was born in 1997. After much further thinking, the new university came into being with clearly articulated Guiding Principles and explicit goals for student learning. A key impetus of the University was toward developing an ecologically literate citizenry. One FGCU Guiding Principle states,

The values of the culture of FGCU are now advanced through common participation in a semester-long course entitled "The University Colloquium: A Sustainable Future." The University Colloquium is an interdisciplinary environmental education seminar designed to explore the concept of sustainability as it relates to a variety of considerations and forces in Southwest Florida. In particular, it considers environmental, social, ethical, historical, scientific, economic, and political influences.

On the first day of class, the students are introduced to the radical notion that ecological literacy is an essential element of being educated. If the classic purpose of educational philosophy is to define "the educated person," then we say our educational philosophy is that "if you are not ecologically literate, then you are not educated." We quote David Orr on the dangers of education:

We say that our hope, represented in this Colloquium, is that students, upon graduation, will be able to claim an environmental education, giving them and creation a chance to carry on in a sustainable manner.

The pedagogical design of the course proceeds from John Dewey's philosophy of experience, as articulated in his book Experience and Education (1938), which is the first text that students encounter. Dewey asserts the progressive tradition and provides a philosophical framework for understanding the invitation to make active meaning of the experience. He also provides the philosophical foundation for the idea that changes in education can lead to change in society.

In addition to reading books and writing five academic essays based on these books, students spend considerable time–about a third of the class–in varied Southwest Florida environments exploring sanctuaries, urban settings, sustainable agricultural sites, and campus systems.

Students' feeling disconnected from the environment is quite common at the start of a new semester and illustrates why the Colloquium requires field trips as one of its core components. The field trips provide the means for the student to combine personal experience–the continuous process of living–with education– to take experience and build on it with new insights and experience–with formal education– to apply deliberate learning and teaching to education. Hands-on learning and carefully designed field trip goals and objectives are essential to the success of each outdoor learning experience.

One such goal is to engage students in an array of community study trips that develop a heightened awareness and understanding of Florida’s environmental components and thereby enhance the development of a specific "sense of place". Central to the Colloquium learning experience is the belief that students must develop this strong "sense of place" in order to integrate and practice values and beliefs that contribute to the sustainability of their region and beyond. All field trips focus the students on specific learning opportunities that each trip affords with a follow-up debriefing discussion of each experience that grounds both the student and the experience in the context of ecological literacy.

At the close of the semester the students will hopefully demonstrate increased awareness, knowledge and understanding of the significance and value of their local community, demonstrate a heightened "sense of place" through expression of increased sensitivity, and act upon the shared responsibility one has of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future.

The Colloquium faculty believe that the learning objectives of the course are best achieved through on campus-based personal interactions with students, faculty, and the surrounding environment made available through on and off-campus learning sites. If, because of extenuating circumstances, the student cannot be present on campus, two distance learning sections are offered. The spirit of the Colloquium (by definition a "sustained conversation") is upheld in WebBoard postings where a new topic is discussed each week through asynchronous conversation.

By carrying out specific field trip objectives posted on the Colloquium website, the student is "guided" away from the virtual classroom and into the wonders of the outdoor classroom. Because the ‘virtual classroom" has no geographic boundaries, students hail from the Florida Keys to the Panhandle and beyond. National, state, and county parks are often field trip destinations. Just like the campus-based student, distance learners experiencing these trips will hopefully gain their "sense of place"–a state of mind, not an address.

Building on the philosophical underpinnings of the course that translate into unique field-based experiences, students concurrently are engaged in a circular learning process - one that requires them to first broaden their awareness to include a more global perspective and to ultimately complete the journey by coming back to an individual one. This journey results in students reaching a destination where they gain a fuller understanding of the environment and their individual place in it, thereby developing self-efficacy. This development occurs in stages, all of which are crucial to becoming ecologically literate.

First, students must be encouraged to expand their thought processes and to become aware of issues on a global scale. This important raising awareness-level activity has the perhaps predictable effect of students feeling overwhelmed and somewhat hopeless as they begin to understand the enormity of the problems they face. This is a dangerous time in the progression of the course as students often state, "I had no idea it was so bad" or "How did I get this far in my education without hearing about all of this?" They could simply ask, as many have, "Why bother? What can I possibly do to stop this? I'm just one person". It is critically important at this stage that students become directed into discussions of possible solutions to problems, both small and large.

This process of change in values, resulting in change in actions taken, is a very powerful one for many students. Finding a 'sense of place" is not unlike the experience of finding a home. Thomas Moore describes the difference between creating a home rather than simply living in a house. He states:

It is easy to see simple enrollment in this course as analogous to simply living in a house. All students enroll in this class, but how do we help them find "home" or as our university describes it, a "sense of place"? The process of making this course "home" is not unlike Aldo Leopold's vision of the process of changing "the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it" (Leopold, 1949, p.240) or David Orr's distinction between universities teaching its students "to reside, not to dwell" (Orr, 1992, p.102). Students then must take this sense of themselves with them into their respective disciplines as they leave the university setting.

Our vision of the University Colloquium is that it will shock students into a realization of the seriousness of the environmental crisis and that it will equip them with some capacity to analyze for themselves the prospects for sustainability. At its best, the Colloquium is sobering and hopeful–sobering since it is for so many of our students, amazingly, their introduction to environmental problems; hopeful since it offers an introduction to solutions through sustainable models and environmental education. Above all, we hope students will accept the responsibility of being ecologically literate with a sense of both humility and individual efficacy.

Ultimately, students must develop their own self-efficacy and feel that they can effect change. They come to this course with varied experiences, values, and goals and should leave the same way - only with a heightened sense of their own power and responsibility. They are able to take this awareness to their families, friends, and careers. This is how effective change begins, one person at a time, one home, one group, one community, . . . one world.

Reference List

Leopold, Aldo. 1949. A Sand County Almanac. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

Moore, Thomas. 1996. "Ecology: Sacred Homemaking," in The Soul of Nature: Celebrating the Spirit of the Earth, ed. Michael Tobias and Georgianne Cowan, 137-144. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Orr, David W. 1992. Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.