By Paige Acklie, Agricultural Communications Experiential Learning Lab Reporter
Undergraduate students at the University of Arkansas now have the opportunity to obtain a minor in sustainability and learn more about the relationships between people and the environment, as well as make themselves more marketable to potential employers.
The program focuses on four domains: Built, Managed, Social and Natural. The minor requires students to complete 18 hours, consisting of three electives and three required courses. The required courses include Foundations of Sustainability (SUST 1103), Applications of Sustainability (SUST 2103) and a capstone experience (SUST 4103). The other nine hours are comprised of electives taken in any or across the four domains of study. Elective courses in each track are split into two tiers.
“The tier-one courses are directly related to sustainability. Tier-two courses are background information or foundational information you might need to understand certain sustainability concepts, and some of them are prerequisites for tier-one courses also,” said Cassandra Gronendyke, administrative specialist for sustainability academic programs at the U of A.
Since the sustainability minor is interdisciplinary, many electives are available to complement students’ majors.
The first two common courses address each sustainability domain. Professors who have expertise in the area teach each unit. Students develop expertise within and across the four domains.
“In order to teach the courses effectively and be inclusive of all systems, we need instructors who are well-versed in each of the systems and can relate their expertise to the other systems as well,” said Jennie Popp, Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness and Area Director for the Center of Agricultural and Rural Sustainability.
Popp is part of a team of faculty, led by Co-directors Steve Boss (geosciences professor) and Tahar Messadi (associate professor in architecture), who represent the various undergraduate colleges.
“We worked to develop the goals and objectives of the minor, identify existing courses on campus that could be part of the minor and create the three required sustainability courses”, said Popp. “This same team of faculty also developed a graduate level certificate in sustainability and we are currently working towards an undergraduate major in sustainability.”
Each course has specific focuses, and two courses require students to interact outside of the classroom.
“The first two core courses have service learning components, so eight percent of the student’s final grade is eight hours of volunteering related to sustainability,” said Gronendyke.
In the capstone course, students develop projects, directly targeted at experiential learning, said Gronendyke. Within the capstone, students have the option to conduct either an internship, service learning project, or a research project in sustainability.
“It can be really interesting to sit in a room with a handful of the capstone students and hear, ‘this person is researching about the impact of aluminum or this person is analyzing press releases from different companies about corporate social responsibility,’ so it runs the gamut, since we get students from all different majors,” said Gronendyke.
Ultimately, students in the capstone course can customize their academic experience by choosing to focus on a particular area of interest related to sustainability.
“Students are expected to do some sort of substantial work in the sustainability capstone course and then write a 10-20 page report on it as well as prepare a poster display summarizing the project. It allows the students to bring back together all of the aspects that you learned,” said Gronendyke.
The sustainability minor has been catching students’ attention more and more each year.
“We have 180 students, topping out the enrollment in the foundations course this spring. That’s the most students we’ve had since we started.
We anticipate larger enrollments next year so we are increasing the class sizes,” said Gronendyke.
Promoting the courses to current and incoming students is a top priority for sustainability faculty.
“We’re trying to get the word out because based on a survey of student knowledge we sponsored this year, students don’t know about the courses that are being offered,” said Gronendyke.
According to Boss, the survey results showed that 46% of U of A students were interested in taking coursework in sustainability.
“That is around 12,000 students at the U of A,” said Boss.
For some of these students, picking up the minor might be easier than they realize.
“A lot of students have already taken one or more classes for the minor and might not even know it,” said Gronendyke.
Students can use a minor in sustainability to set them apart from others and make themselves more competitive when applying for jobs and internships.
“Sustainability, by its very nature, applies to everything. If you do a sustainability minor, it will allow you to better connect the things you’re learning [related to sustainability] with the things you’re learning in your major,” said Gronendyke.
The newly designed website provides lots of information on the minor: http://sustainability.uark.edu/16934.php
Students interested in minoring in sustainability should make an advising appointment with Cassandra Gronendyke at cmgronen@uark.edu