Exploring Environmental Studies at Houghton College

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What Hi my name is Brian Webb and I teach environmental studies here at home in college. We're here at the Hotel Solar Array, which produces about 40% of our electricity needs from clean renewable energy. When this site was completed in 2015, it was the largest solar array on any college campus in New York State, and the largest of any Christian college in the country. This is just one example of the kinds of environmental stewardship solutions that can help solve some of the more complex problems we face today. I frequently get asked the question, what exactly is environmental studies and how does it differ from environmental science? The answer to that is we examine environmental challenges, things like the climate crisis and biodiversity loss, environmental justice and plastic pollution through the lens of the social sciences. So we start with the foundation of the natural sciences. There are several biology recourse is required in the program in order to provide that solid foundation so that students understand earth systems and processes, but then our primary focus centers in on the intersections between human systems and ecosystems. So the environmental studies program is a highly interdisciplinary program where we intentionally bring in a lot of different social science disciplines in order to provide a more holistic framework of what environmental issues look like. So we talk a lot about communication, how do we communicate effectively about environmental problems? Look at psychology and sociology and culture and how do these things we've in to form the ways that we perceive environmental issues and the ways that we feel empowered to respond to them and so understanding cross cultural dynamics and how do we address global problems on this sort of bigger intercultural stage is really important as well. Students and environmental studies have a lot of exciting and unique opportunities for hands on learning as well. We have internship opportunities both right on campus and the center for Sustainability. Plus we've intentionally designed the curriculum to pair well with off campus learning opportunities. Students can go to the possible institute to spend time in michigan in the summer, learning on conservation biology or they can take part in the Creation Care study program in New Zealand or believes where they spend a semester living in intentional community and learning about sustainability together. Plus the holding center for sustainability provides plenty of opportunities for environmental study students to see how environmental solutions are played out right here on this campus through things like our solar array right here, our energy efficiency Or are student run projects like the Houghton College Orchard with 79 fruit trees or apiary, where we have students who are involved in beekeeping and harvesting honey to provide for the dining hall into selling the campus store or advocacy, where students learn to be empowered to take action on public policy that connects with environmental issues. Every year, we take students to the annual global U. N. Climate conference where some of the most important world leaders gather to try to address this global issue and holding students actually get the opportunity to serve as official United Nations observers with badges to sit in on diplomatic meetings to rub shoulders into network with some of the key global leaders on this issue. Then perhaps most importantly how does our christian faith we've into all of this obviously is a christian institution. The way that our faith engages with important global issues is critically important for how we approach this too often in the environmental world. It tends to be these sort of conversations driven by secular voices that shape the way we approach this. We believe that we as christians have far more reasons to care about environmental issues, both because we understand the creator who made the world, but we also understand this stewardship mandate where we've been told as christians that we need to be caretakers in God's creation altogether. What we're trying to do is to provide students an opportunity to wrestle with some of the most complex and the most important issues facing the world today to take their christian education and to apply it in a diverse and interdisciplinary setting so that we can try to solve some of these problems together.