Examples of applications to the Winnebago Project

Stephanie Spehar. Anthropology.
I am a physical anthropologist who specializes in the behavioral ecology of nonhuman primates.  As most nonhuman primates are threatened or endangered in the wild, one of my primary interests is also wildlife and broad-scale ecosystem conservation.  Much of my research and field experience has either directly or indirectly addressed issues such as habitat loss and fragmentation, human-wildlife interactions, and community-based conservation and education programs, in environments as diverse as Kenya, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Indonesia, and Los Angeles. I am applying to the Faculty College on Infusing Sustainability Into Your Teaching because I would like to integrate these interests and experiences with the concept of sustainability to develop a new undergraduate course, Human Dimensions of Biological Conservation, that could serve both the Anthropology and Environmental Studies programs. This course would provide an introduction to the ways that human social, cultural, and economic activities influence wildlife and ecosystem conservation. I would like the concept of sustainability to be a central theme in this course, infusing discussions of issues ranging from resource use to economic growth to maintaining healthy ecosystems and human societies.  I envision that this class will focus on four major issues in international conservation: deforestation and habitat loss (due to logging and conversion of land for agriculture and development), unsustainable hunting and the bushmeat crisis, the illegal wildlife trade (for wildlife products and pets), and tourism and development. Students will examine these issues through both general overviews and specific case studies.  Throughout, students will examine and critique possible solutions to these issues, such as sustainable logging, agroforestry, reforestation, community-based conservation programs, debt-for-nature swaps, and ecotourism.  My goals for this course are to introduce students to the impact of anthropogenic activities on wildlife populations and ecosystems, and to encourage them to think broadly and critically about ways to enhance the sustainability of human interactions with the environment.

Linfeng Xie. Chemistry.
I have been teaching "Organic Chemistry" for the last decade here at UWO.  The two-semester courses have a lecture and a lab component.  Many experiments in the lab used chemicals that are environmentally hazardous, and also generated large quantity of wastes that require proper and expensive disposal.  Over the last few years, I have started working towards improving some of these experiments so that they are more green.  Green chemistry has become increasing important around the world, both in academic research and in the chemical industry.  I plan to increase my effort in doing an overhaul of our lab experiments in "Organic Chemistry" courses so that they are more environmentally benign.  When introducing new green experiments and modifying the existing ones, I plan to adhere to the "twelve principles of green chemistry" set forth by the American Chemical Society.  Some of these include: prevent waste, design less hazardous synthesis, use safer solvents, and minimize the potential hazards. I think I can benefit greatly from the "Winnebago Sustainability Project" faculty college in May.  This, in return, will allow me to improve the organic lab experiments that will benefit students and the university.  Please accept this email as my official application to attend this Faculty College.

Christine Roth. English.
If I am invited to participate in the Winnebago Sustainability Project, I would revise the way I teach any number of optional content courses in the English department, including, but not limited to, the senior capstone course, ENG 481: Seminar in English Studies. Additionally, in an ideal world, I’d like to develop an Introduction to Ecocriticism and/or Rhetoric of Sustainability course for Environmental Studies students. First and foremost, as someone who teaches literature, rhetoric and composition, I’d like to see sustainability take its place with race, class, and gender as a subject deserving of focus and serious critique. Currently, six out of the eight optional content courses offered by the English department in Spring 2008 focus on race or gender, and, as David Owens remarks in Composition and Sustainability, "matters of social justice are largely matters of sustainability as well." In this way, sustainability is deeply interwoven with the experiences of women and people of color. By revising my own optional content courses, I’d like to enable students to understand how cultural/political/scientific discourse influences issues of sustainability and to use rhetorical concepts to analyze a variety of social justice/sustainability texts and arguments. Finally, I am particularly interested in designing a course specifically for the Environmental Studies program because the struggle to shape meaning and action is so central to this major. Because rhetoric constitutes the very means by which sustainability issues are described, negotiated, ignored, and transformed, it is necessary for students from a wide spectrum of disciplines to understand the rhetorical dimensions of sustainability discourses. Some ecocritical approaches that would provide the theoretical framework for rhetorical/literary analyses would be the definition of terms like “Nature," the “Wild,” and the “Other;” the ways in which literature, public discourse, and theory can attend to ecological and environmental ethics; and the interrelations between human society, and its biophysical environments in literature and culture. After all, while literature cannot function as a direct tool for environmental communication, we cannot understand and embrace sustainability in purely rational terms without an urge for a radical shift in sensibility.