MSU goes green in new course on sustainability

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A class being offered in spring 2009 will help keep students going green long after they graduate.

The course, NSC 491, section 001, will be an introduction to sustainability studies, said Terry Link, director of the Office of Campus Sustainability. Sustainability teaches students to meet the needs of the present generation while not jeopardizing resources for future ones.

The class is a trial run for a specialization on sustainability, Link said. It will hopefully be approved by the end of the semester, he added.

The course will focus on four key principles of sustainability – ecological integrity, economic viability, social justice and aesthetics – and will strive to teach students to balance them, said Laurie Thorp, one of the co-instructors for the course.

Students must master all of these concepts, Link said.

“It’s (sustainability), not just the environment,” Thorp said. “It’s looking at those four key pieces and keeping them in balance.”

The section will differ from other classes because students will develop a portfolio to show that they have gained competency in all four areas, as opposed to taking tests and writing papers, Thorp said.

“We encourage students to get out into the community and engage in service projects and to look at some things that they’re doing in their lives like extracurriculars,” Thorp said.

The students also will learn other skills such as systems thinking, which will incorporate all four pieces of sustainability in problem solving, Thorp said.

“I hope that they get an appreciation for how everything is connected,” Link said. “You can’t just look at one thing and think that it’s not connected. In order to design solutions, you need to think more broadly than we typically do.”

People often think about environmental sustainability and not about the other parts, which is a challenge, Thorp said.

Students said the class could offer a new perspective.

“I think definitely that it would be interesting,” said Kristen Whiteside, a premedical and human biology senior. “I would be interested if I had time.”

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