This activity introduces students to different forms of energy, energy transformations, energy storage, and the flow of energy through systems. Students learn that most energy can be traced back to nuclear fusion on the sun.

Campus Climate Conversations are designed to be both educational and "deliberative," meaning students, staff, and faculty interact with one another in small groups to share views and ideas about climate action strategies. This activity is structured to enhance education and engagement, and to generate collaborative climate action strategies.

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Faculty and students of politics inevitably engage with contentious debates about global inequality and development, conflict, and environmental sustainability. Teaching and learning outcomes in politics tend to emphasize critical and analytical thinking, but have paid less attention to emotion and feeling in considering how to navigate current issues. How can contemplative practices help instructors and students not only intellectually consider, but also emotionally hold difficult and often divisive and unsettling issues? In what ways can such practices both create space for honest, compassionate discussion and encourage engaged citizenship? By using a guided exercise of self-reflection and dialogue, students will develop self-awareness of their emotional responses and of their peers to contentious political issues, and recognize the importance of open listening and dialogue for gaining a deeper appreciation of contrasting views.

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I use an "engaging question" on the first day of class in all of my courses. This activity is designed to be both engaging and central to all of the course content. That is, the activity is designed around questions that we can keep coming back to, over and over, after each learning unit. This approach not only provides a unifying focus for the course, but it also provides an opportunity to model critical thinking as we revisit the question each time with a different perspective. For the Dynamic Earth and Global Change (the Physical Geology course at Macalester) I chose a question about climate change. The activity starts with two graphs (plots of surface temperature and atmosphere CO2 composition for the past 1,000 years). Students are asked to describe the graphs, interpret the graphs, make some predictions, and explain the graphs using basic earth science processes.

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This introductory activity engages learners in the study of earthquake hazards and the risk these hazards pose to humans in the communities in which we live. Learners will compare three maps of Anchorage, AK, depicting spatial information related to seismic hazards to generate questions about the factors that influence shaking intensity and damage to the built environment during earthquakes.

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In this activity, learners select the scientific instruments for their satellite, calculate the power requirements for all the subsystems, and construct a scale model of their very own Earth observing satellite using building blocks and/or Legos. Includes instructions and worksheets.

In this video segment from NASA, robotics researcher Ayanna Howard uses engineering to improve the intelligence of robots in space exploration.

This is a problem set that gets students to think quantitatively about magmas. To be most effective, it should be done in conjunction with a showing of some or all (I recommend some...) of the movie "Volcano". How much water would be needed to stop a lava flow on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles?!

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This assignment requires that students research the historical context of an environmental issue within their own communities and apply different types of organizing/advocacy tactics for instigating social change.

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Through an analysis of water quality in a nearby lake, students are introduced to basic chemical techniques such as titrations (both acid/base and oxidation/reduction), atomic absorption spectrometry, and uv/vis spectrometry

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The classic campus-based project is an environmental or sustainability assessment, often referred to as an environmental audit. This course, taught at Carleton in 2001, describes how this type of project can be undertaken. In this scenario, a student, campus environmental group or class researches aspects the envinormental impact of the school.

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The goal of this exercise is for students to complete a basic environmental assessment of Newark Road Prairie, a 35-acre wet-mesic prairie and state natural area owned by Beloit College.

The exercise is completed over a 5-week period as the class covers chapters on Streams and Flooding, Soil Resources, and Groundwater Resources. Students visit the prairie once a week during a 2-hour class period. Two additional 2-hour class periods per week are devoted to lecture, discussion, and analysis of field data. During the site visits, students conduct an initial field reconnaissance, measure the discharge of a stream that flows through the prairie (inflow and outflow), describe prairie soils, and measure water levels at seven previously installed water table wells and four staff gages. The field data can be collected in any order after the field reconnaissance is completed.

All field data, including GPS coordinates of the positions of discharge measurements, soils samples, and wells, are recorded in a standardized data dictionary (using GPS Pathfinder Office/TerraSync software) on a handheld PC. A satellite image of the prairie is loaded on the handheld PC, so that students can see where they are relative to other physical features as they collect their data. Data are downloaded in the lab and utilized for the construction of a water table map (by hand) and an assessment of site conditions and potential impacts.

In addition to the data collected in the field, students are given a topographic map of the region, which they utilize to delineate the basin for the stream that flows through the prairie, and a soils map of the prairie, with which they compare their own soil descriptions. They are also given a land use map of the region. Using all of this information, students write a 4 to 5 page report that describes current conditions and potential challenges or threats to the preservation and management of the prairie.

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This activity produces a fluent choral reading of Our Big Home: An Earth Poem, by Linda Glaser, when cooperative student groups rehearse, conduct vocabulary word study, and perform for their 4th grade peers.

This course focuses on two sets of issues in environmental ethics. The first set of issues, emerging significantly from practices such as animal agriculture and animal captivity in zoos, research facilities, and other settings, concerns the moral status of non-human animals. What kind of moral consideration are non-human animals owed? Do they have rights, and if so, how extensive are those rights? As a philosophy class, our emphasis is on the analysis of concepts and the critical evaluation of arguments. Beyond gaining a familiarity with the issue of the moral status of animals (along with the second issue of the class, not discussed here, concerning global climate change), students should expect to develop their analytic and evaluative skills through in-class discussion and a range of writing assignments.

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This is a inquiry-driven class research project on a local environmental geochemistry question that is accomplished during three-hour laboratory sessions each week. Students are divided into groups that will share the responsibilities of collecting samples and data. Once the data is collected, it is shared among the entire class so that all students have the same data set. The class works on data presentation, preliminary analysis, and statistics together Then each student writes his/her own report separately.

Outcomes:

Laboratory skills -- Students have basic laboratory skills necessary to carry out a supervised geochemical study (e.g. can perform Gram titration of waters in field, can collect water samples using clean methods).

Quantitative methods -- Students can manipulate, sort, and transfer data in Excel and can create simple x-y plots and histograms to bring out trends in data.

Critical thinking -- Students can develop multiple hypotheses to explain trends in data and can design tests of these hypotheses.

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This is an independent case study project completed in pairs. The students should investigate an example of natural geochemistry and then use a poster format to share their findings with the class.

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Students collect data for this term project starting with the first lab exercise and continuing throughout the semester. As each unit is covered in the text, class, and lab, students are directed to collect data relevant to their term project. For example: Topographic maps are covered at the start of the semester and students must locate their home; describe its location using the Public Land Survey, Universal Transverse Mercator, and Longitude-Latitude Systems; and describe the local topography. When natural hazards (flooding, slopes, earthquakes, volcanoes, and radon gas) are covered, students must use web resources (some of which are provided by the instructor at http://www2.ivcc.edu/phillips/geology/environmental_research.htm), local resources (such as the local fire chief, library, mayor, relatives, and neighbors), and personal observation to identify hazards and assess the risk they pose; these hazards are submitted as part of a lab assignment. The information collected is analyzed using the principles discussed in class and feedback is provided on pieces that are submitted throughout the semester. At the conclusion of the semester, students organize the collected information, add illustrations (maps and photos), analyze and evaluate the materials collected, and conclude the report with a discussion of how the area should be developed in the future based on the principles learned in the class.

The activity shows the students the immediate relevance of the material as it is covered, shows the students the types of information publicly available, and helps them develop critical analysis skills. The activity introducers students to basic geologic knowledge and shows them how to make use of it.

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To complete this activity, students can follow the instructions and the tutorial in the Environmental Health Risk Inventory website. In doing this, they will gain an understanding of how to use on-line tools and databases as well as the processes of compiling an environmental health risk inventory for a specific locale. In the activity, students will address the question: "how healthy is your neighborhood?" Students will address anthropogenic and naturally-occurring health risks in their hometown or neighborhood by using data collected from online mapping tools and databases. Students will also complete a reflective summary based on the data that they collect.

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This assignment teaches students how to evaluate arguments concerning the maldistribution of environmental hazards, based on complex quantitative data.

This is a field investigation of how a natural system is organized and the interconnectedness of an ecosystem.