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Environmental Studies Department
Olin Rice 249
1600 Grand Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55105
651-696-6274
Comments & questions to:
esson@macalester.edu
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Faculty and Course
Development Opportunities
Approved Grants
Course Development - Prof. Holly Barcus, Geography
Develop a new course titled “Rural Landscapes and Livelihoods: A Geography of Rural Landuse and Community Change.” Course description and objectives: The Minnesota, Mississippi, and St. Croix River watersheds collectively encompass no less than 42 of the 87 counties in Minnesota. Within this area lies the rapidly expanding Twin Cities urban center on one end of the development spectrum, and a significant expanse of rural land characterized by intensive agriculture interspersed with extensive recreational opportunities on the other. Forming the backbones of these landscapes are the Mississippi, Minnesota, and St. Croix Rivers. This course will focus on the human elements of land changes within the watersheds of the Three Rivers, including such issues as agricultural changes, land conversion, and land management. Rural community strategies for adapting to and accommodating competing demands for water and land use will be considered, including pressure for new housing developments, recreation opportunities (boating, fishing, hiking, biking), and conservation needs. Broadly, the course will address issues of urban expansion and rural landuse change and the effects of responses to local policy and development on watershed and river system health. Using the Three Rivers study area to frame our discussions, students will explore the rapidly changing rural environments of Minnesota and develop a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of human and physical systems more broadly.
Course Development - Prof. Andrea Cremer, History
As a new history faculty member, I have volunteered to revise and teach the freshman seminar, "The Global in the Local." This course introduces new Macalester students to key issues global significance through immersion in local history. The sights and sounds of the Twin Cities region not only helps students to understand the ways in which their living and learning environment extends beyond the Macalester campus, but also enhances student awareness of the diverse, complex history of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the state of Minnesota. With support from the Mellon Three Rivers Center Grant, I would be able to devote my time and resources to developing a course that approaches the history of Minnesota framed by the presence, persistence, and influence of these important waterways. The course would be divided into three sections: " Three Rivers and Native Societies," will explore the history of the region prior to European settlement. The three rivers provided important lines of cultural and material exchange well before the arrival of European traders. This segment of the course will assist students in grasping the local and global significance of indigenous history and the vitality of indigenous cultures in Minnesota. "0 Pioneers!" will explore the significance of the waterways to the explosion of immigrant and settler populations in the nineteenth century. The course will continue to address the role of Native Americans and their encounters with Euro-American settlers in this era of intense social and environmental change. "Rivers of the Nation," will examine the industrial revolution and the growth of U. S. nationalism in the later nineteenth century. Special attention will be given to the growth of Fort Snelling and its key position at the juncture of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. This section of the course will interrogate the rivers' roles in industry and warfare, specifically the role of rivers in supplying military forts and personnel in the Civil War. Click here for the syllabus.
Course Development - Prof. Wang Ping, English
I propose to teach a new course in the fall, 2008: "Where the Rivers Gather and Waters Meet: Projects of Writing on Minnesota's Three Rivers." This course will take a cross-genre and interdisciplinary approach, a combination of academic research and creative writing, critical thinking and workshop, as well as the fieldwork and interviews. It will use the Minnesota, Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers near the campus and the cities as the sites for field trips, research, interviews with the local communities along the rivers, and for final writing projects, which will include one research paper, one interview, one poem, one short story, and one personal essay, all related to the river or the water theme, with special attention to the environmental issues. This interdisciplinary course will examine the interactions between culture and nature, how humans have been affecting and affected by the rivers, and how agriculture, transportation, dams, industries, and recreation development have changed the rivers and their environment in many ways. The students will choose their own research topics such as wetland drainage, land, water and forest resources, human population growth, agriculture, urban/suburb expansion, tour industry, biodiversity and eco-justice in the three-river region, and all topics should include the notion of the ecosystem that has been sustained by the coexistence and interaction between plants, animals, humans, and other life forms, the system which is facing big challenges due to human activities and global warming. The students will conduct their fieldwork and interviews along the rivers near the Twin Cities.
Course Revision - Prof. Chris Wells, Environmental Studies
This is a course revision request to add a new unit to my course, ENVI/HIST 234: American Environmental History, which will focus on the designation of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway as one of the eight original rivers to be protected by the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968. Adding this unit will strengthen the course in several important ways. First, it will add a much-needed local case study to the course. As the final paper for the course, I ask students to write a "place paper" - to select a place that they know well or can research easily and to write its environmental history. Although many of the course readings model this type of approach to doing environmental history, the course does not currently have any readings based on local places. Adding this local case study will allow me to model both the type of research and the place-based approach that I want them to follow for their final papers. Second, because this course is one of the Environmental Studies department's three "gateway" courses, adding this unit to the class will create a nice advertisement for the broader opportunities offered by the Three Rivers Center. Third, as a case study of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, the designation of the St. Croix as a Wild and Scenic River illustrates key political goals (such as river protection), important actors (such as Walter Mondalc and Gaylord Nelson, who conceived the original Earth Day), the varying responses of different levels of government (local, state, national) to environmental problems, and the differing roles of top-down and grass-roots approaches to environmental protection. This is, in other words, an excellent opportunity to teach the history of 1960s/1970s environmentalism using a local framework.
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