InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources > Instructor Stories > Jill Schneiderman
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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The materials are free and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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Initial Publication Date: July 12, 2015

Jill Schneiderman: Using Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources in Earth Science and Environmental Justice at Vassar College

About this Course

A first-year writing seminar.

18
students
Two 75-minute seminars

No lab

four-year liberal arts
college
Syllabus (Microsoft Word 57kB Jun30 14)


A Success Story in Building Student Engagement

The Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources Module enabled me, for the first time, to focus on and therefore fully integrate the study of surface water resources within the environmental justice framework. Through the use of Google Earth, I was able to capitalize on student interest in technology and visual representation to help them develop enhanced spatial reasoning skills and ground environmental justice issues in geoscience.

Since developing this course in 1997 using a National Science Foundation curriculum grant, I have taught some iteration of "Earth Science and Environmental Justice" nearly a dozen times. In the earliest versions I focused on the atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere in order to explore the justice issues that cropped up in these spheres of the Earth system (see Schneiderman & Sharpe 2001 (Acrobat (PDF) 1MB Jun30 14)). However, before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the phrase "environmental justice" was familiar only to a small group of activists, scholars, and policy makers. Thus, the idea that different groups of people were disproportionately impacted by environmental risk was foreign to most students. As a result, in the first few years of teaching the course, I spent considerable time not only on the Earth science but on philosophical arguments about justice. I found it very useful in those early years to co-teach the course with an ethicist. In subsequent years I moved to the model of teaching this course as a writing-intensive first-year seminar that emphasized the Earth science behind environmental justice. By teaching the course to first-year students, I have had the opportunity to enable them to investigate basic Earth science principles in order to remedy environmental injustices.

My Experience Teaching with InTeGrate Materials

Using the Environmental Justice and Freshwater Resources Module in my first-year seminar forced me to think about the degree to which my students were using geoscience to evaluate problems of environmental injustice. It allowed me to assess my effectiveness as a transdisciplinary educator.

Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course

I used the module for the last 2 weeks of a 14-week semester. At that point, students had become well-versed in controversies surrounding questions of environmental injustice. They comprehended and fully appreciated geologic time as well as the spatial and temporal scales of Earth processes. By using the module, I was able to integrate the social studies with the physical science. Throughout the semester I reminded the students that the last two weeks of the course would be somewhat different than our usual lecture, in-class writing and discussion format so they were prepared to engage in activities such minute papers, think-pair-share activities and short in-class assessments.

Assessments

I used all of the assessment questions for each module. Responses to the assessments enabled me to revisit subjects that were not fully grasped upon first encountering them. Although the students were at first disquieted by my use of assessments, as I had not done so earlier in the semester, I eased their anxiety by not counting the answers to the assessments in their final grades. Instead, I simply used the assessments as a way to determine how well the students had processed the concepts encountered in the module.

Outcomes

By using the freshwater and environmental justice module, I hoped that students would become engaged in the hydrologic science relevant to environmental injustices and become convinced that they could use scientific data and spatial visualizations to investigate social issues. Also, as a result of using the varied approaches to teaching such as think-pair-share, jigsaws, concept tests and minute papers, I have since employed these techniques as learning tools in all my other classes because I now see how effective they are in promoting active learning, and because they enable me to gauge the degree to which students comprehend what I am trying to teach them.

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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »