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Overview
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Overview Jennifer Meta Robinson Communication and Culture The complex environmental, social, and economic challenges faced by society require our ‘‘thinking collectively at disciplinary crossroads,’’ as Whitney Schlegel , Heather Reynolds, Victoria Getty, Diane Henshel, and James Reidhaar note (this volume). In the case of teaching environmental literacy across the curriculum , such thinking will mean fostering not only students’ proficiency in diverse knowledge and skill domains but also their facility in assessing and supplementing those areas that they do not know su≈ciently. To successfully negotiate these challenges, we will need to draw on broad resources and constituencies, sharing models, success stories, and cautionary tales of individual insights, group collaborations , and institutional initiatives. While parts 2 and 3 of this book outline some of the core knowledge and teaching methods appropriate to teaching environmental literacy and sustainability through the lens of various disciplines, both inside and outside the traditional classroom, part 4 speaks to the potential that the authors have found in building broad-based collaborations among faculty , campus administration and services, and students. As we have indicated, environmental literacy—with its evocation of complex problems requiring sophisticated, multifaceted responses—lends itself to the exercise of new, collective means of teaching and learning. Major funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health recognize the potential of ‘‘multidisciplinary,’’ ‘‘interdisciplinary,’’ and ‘‘transdisciplinary ’’ research to address complex issues. Thus, various ways of con- 168 ⭈ jennifer meta robinson structing useful disciplinary crossroads can be employed, sometimes bringing multiple perspectives to bear on a single problem (multidisciplinarity), sometimes seeking to truly integrate diverse disciplines into a new paradigm (interdisciplinarity ), and sometimes collaborating across the usual disciplinary limits to allow people to operate as experts in new domains (transdisciplinarity). Even individual scholars now identify themselves as knowledge domain boundarycrossers , borrowing methods traditional to one field in order to apply them to another or applying the theories and findings of one field to subjects typically considered by another. Students and faculty alike are energized by the possibilities of moving beyond conventional departmental lines. The urgency of our planetary dilemma challenges us to think in terms not only of how to make the most of traditional course structures in advancing environmental literacy and sustainability, but also of how to create and support other approaches and to make use of the implicit educational messages communicated through practice. Universities teach about sustainable human– environment relationships through the examples they set, either positively or negatively, in decisions relating to infrastructure, architecture, and community relations. For example, a campus-wide focus on civic engagement and liberal education prioritizes the roles that students can play in shaping our collective future. Similarly, visible university support for campus greening projects that facilitate students’ collaboration with faculty, administrators, and sta√ to make the campus a more sustainable environment can teach powerful lessons about self-authorship and civic responsibility. Such projects can extend the teaching space beyond classrooms and courses to all of the spaces that students spend time in, creating an action-based teaching ethic. The role of cross-disciplinary initiatives in support of environmental literacy and sustainability includes supporting faculty members as they move from roles as interested citizens into experts who can contribute to general understanding and education through one or many disciplinary lenses. While some faculty may have long been interested in sustainability and green issues and may have already seen their disciplinary research and teaching in that light, others may be just exploring what they can contribute to the conversations around a green campus. In her chapter titled ‘‘Environmental Literacy and the Curriculum—An Administrative Perspective,’’ Catherine Larson moves from a personal to a campus-wide perspective on what it means to support this activity from an administrative position. As an expert in Hispanic literature and an Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University, Larson recalls how, from an initial sense of being an ‘‘outsider,’’ she came to embrace the concept of environmental literacy as a basic competency for all citizens, a unifying theme for all disciplines, and a possible organizing theme for an entire campus, from academics to physical operations, purchasing, and [44.197.251.102] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 14:08 GMT) Overview ⭈ 169 administration. Larson provides an overview of key curricular initiatives that emerged from the environmental literacy movement at Indiana. These initiatives, which include service-learning and campus greening activities, green certificates, leadership minors, web-based, traditional, and topics courses, freshman learning groups...