Barry Ross Muchnick, assistant professor of environmental studies, recently presented an invited talk at the annual conference of the Association of American Colleges & Universities in Atlanta, Georgia. His presentation highlighted the numerous and innovative ways civic learning is embedded within the environmental studies major, and derived in part from an AAC&U Mini Grant for Civic Learning in the Major by Design he received in 2018.
Part of an interdisciplinary panel that included faculty from communications studies and informatics departments, Muchnick’s talk featured student-driven, service-learning projects from recent years such as the Power Dialog, the Tiny House Project, and highlighted partnerships with the Patuxent Tidewater Land Trust to train students as Land Steward Monitors and with Historic St. Mary’s City to break ground on a new Heirloom Garden to grow period appropriate produce for the museum’s food-based living history demonstrations.
The conference audience included over 1,800 faculty, staff, and administrators from higher education institutions across the country. It was an ideal forum to foreground the entrepreneurial academic work conducted by the environmental studies program.
