My introductory botany course enrolls 24 first- and second-year students with a wide range of interests, from anthropology, art, biology, and environmental studies to education, modern languages, and sociology. They arrive in the class with diverse backgrounds including gardening, farming, hiking, and cultivating houseplants. I teach the class “from the familiar to the unfamiliar,” using items from grocery stores and local plantings more frequently than materials from scientific supply houses. I aim to awaken students to plant structure, function, and diversity and develop their critical thinking skills.
Beloit College’s Pathways to Sustainability Leadership Program encourages faculty to develop course modules that help students connect sustainability concepts to a diverse array of disciplines. Although my botany course has included a substantial amount of ecological content, it has lacked specific exercises focused on the connections between ecology and sustainability. Funds from Pathways supported the work of five undergraduates on the development of sustainability-related modules on the phenology of campus trees and assessment of plant community diversity of two oak savannas on campus. The phenology module was adapted from the National Phenology Network’s (NPN) citizen science program. The diversity module adapted standard field survey techniques for use by beginning students on campus.
Results/Conclusions
The new modules increased the explicitly sustainability-related content of the course and engaged the students well. For the phenology module, each student selected a tree to observe throughout the semester. Most of the students “took ownership” of a tree and watched it carefully, including reporting seasonal changes to me at times other than the official reporting dates. The students were excited about the opportunity to report their data to a national program, but few actually entered their data because of difficulty with the web interface. The two student developers who had not yet graduated ran the plant community diversity assessment. This assessment went well, as both a data collection and analysis exercise and a way for the students in the course to be mentored by their peers. The intentional inclusion and labeling of sustainability-related activities enhanced student engagement with sustainability concepts and my emphasis on sustainability throughout the semester. At the end of the semester, all of the students reported that their understanding of sustainability had changed. Students who started the course with little knowledge of the concept indicated the greatest change in understanding. Future offerings of the course may add a module on sustainability and food production.