Capstone Courses - Summer 2012
*Envir St 600, Seminar 2: Community Scale Composting
5/29/12- 7/8/2012
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9-12 PM
Steve Ventura sventura@facstaff.wisc.edu
Madison and nearby municipalities such as Middleton and Fitchburg are increasing efforts to compost more of their urban waste stream. This service learning capstone course gives students the chance to:
- Discover the opportunities and challenges of composting at a community scale
- Work on a composting service learning team project with local community partners
- Explore potential future jobs and careers
Through class discussions, guest speakers, and excursions, we will investigate questions such as: What effect can composting have on the urban waste stream? How does composting work? What benefits and challenges does it have for Madison-area communities? What political and economic factors affect municipal composting? What synergies are there between urban composting, urban farming, and other city sustainability efforts? How can and do urban composting operations involve minority residents and children?
Students will work in interdisciplinary teams to assist local community partners with composting-related projects. In-class and homework activities are designed to help students investigate careers of interest. 25+ hours of service learning required (~4 hrs/week).
To request more information or to apply for admission, email Nina Chaopricha at trautmann@wisc.edu.
Capstone Courses – Fall 2012
Envir St 600, Seminar 1: Environmental Education: Science and Sustainability
Monday & Wednesday 11-12:15 PM
Tracey Holloway taholloway@wisc.edu
For this ES600 Capstone class, a small group of students will work with Prof. Holloway to edit, expand, and improve materials for a new course in sustainability science. The capstone students will serve as a consulting group, reviewing and developing text, problems, and multi-media resources. The final project of the semester will be a published textbook with accompanying in class projects and online resources, to be deployed for a freshman and sophomore class in Spring 2013. Capstone students will bring their own expertise, experience as an environmental studies student, and creativity to help your "client" -- Prof. Holloway -- produce innovative, fun, curriculum introducing students to physical science aspects of environmental systems. All backgrounds welcome. Some calculus helpful but not required.
Class will meet in Enzyme Inst-room 234 on Mondays, room 272 on Wednesdays.
Envir St 600, Seminar 2: Perspectives on the Politics of Food and Sustainability
Tuesday 2-4:30 PM
Andrew Case ancase@wisc.edu
The last ten years have seen an explosion of interest in environmental circles on the subject of food – how it is produced, how it is distributed, how it is consumed, and everything in between. This course will explore the emergence of contemporary debates about food and sustainability from a variety of perspectives. Through readings, discussions, and class projects, we'll work together to develop a set of critical questions for asking where these debates emerged from, where they are going, and what they might be leaving out. Students will then apply those questions by developing interdisciplinary research projects that explore firsthand the role of food in debates about the environment more generally, and present those projects in a public setting.
After enrolling in the course you will be asked to fill out a brief survey.
Envir St 600, Seminar 3: Sustainability on the UW-Madison Campus
Wednesday 2:30-5:30 PM
Cathy Middlecamp chmiddle@wisc.edu
In this capstone, you will be part of a design team. Your task, working closely with your fellow classmates and the professor, is to design activities that will engage freshmen in leaning about the operations on our campus that relate to sustainability and WeConserve. These activities and the accompanying course materials (photos, film clips, prezi presentations) will be used in the course Env. Studies 126 ("Principles of Environmental Science") in spring 2013. Skills valued on this team include any of the following: a love of learning and wanting to engage others in it, knowledge of communication arts (photography, film, production), knowledge of science and engineering fields that relate to sustainability, and knowledge of student sustainability groups on campus. Since this is a team, each person only needs one or two of these skills!
*Envir St 600, Seminar 7: Conservation in Southern Wisconsin: A Case Study of the Badger Army Ammunitions Plant
Tuesday & Thursday 9:30-10:45 AM
Marya Johnston-McIntosh johnstonmcin@wisc.edu & Paul Zedler phzedler@wisc.edu
This course will examine the multiple dimensions ofenvironmental conservation and ecological restoration as seen locally in thecase of the 7,000-acre Badger Army Ammunitions Plant outside of Baraboo,Wisconsin. Students will be briefed on the cultural and natural history of the area as well as recent challenges and opportunities to conservation efforts.The focus of the course is a service-learning project that students willdevelop and complete in conjunction with the needs of a community-basedconservation organization working on the site. These projects will allowstudents to observe and contribute to real and tangible issues facingrestoration efforts.
*Indicates field course