SUMMER 2003 •
VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1
SPECIAL ISSUE: REAPING THE REWARDS OF
THE PLAN FOR MOUNT HOLYOKE 2003
Plan
goals: Promote environmental literacy, research, study, and responsibility
• Explore new curricular programs
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THOMAS MILLETTE
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Curricular trails, campus
networks of data collection stations, are enabling faculty
and students to have access to information about weather,
tree growth, water quality, and even the migration of American
eels through campus waterways as they return to saltwater
to spawn. Here, Stacie Davis (left) and Suzanne Moum, both
'05, gather data about invasive plant species at one collection
station. |
In Shakespeare's
As You Like It, Duke Senior, exiled to the Forest of Arden,
exults to find "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
/ Sermons in stones, and good in every thing." Imagine how he
might have felt about Mount Holyoke's curricular trails, campus
networks of data collection stations that gather and communicate
information about weather, tree growth, water quality, and even
the migration of American eels through campus waterways as they
return to saltwater to spawn.
The curricular trails
were developed by the Center for Environmental Literacy as part
of the College's ongoing efforts to use the campus as a vast,
green laboratory for the study of landscape ecology. Far from
being limited to environmental studies, the data collected on
the curricular trails, accessible to anyone who can use a Web
browser, has made possible the study of issues in history, economics,
and a variety of other fields. To bring the outdoors into the
classroom, the center has focused on developing ways to infuse
nonenvironmental courses with environmental elements, in effect
"greening" the curriculum. That effort, launched this year in
a limited number of courses, has great potential for the broader
curriculum, says Thomas Millette, director of the center and associate
professor of geography. This fall, he said, a faculty seminar
is planned "to get interesting ideas from faculty members on how
to 'green' the curriculum from the social science and humanities
side of things." As more data is collected along the curricular
trails, perhaps more people will be able to learn from what the
trees and brooks are saying.
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