Dr. Bevin Ashenmiller, Occidental College, Economics
Sustainability, Climate Resilience and Equity
I attended the Valley and Ridge Workshop hoping to learn more about how Dickinson College integrated sustainability across the curricular and co-curricular space. The workshop exposed me to wonderful faculty and staff from Dickinson and beyond, who were also thinking critically about how to engage with sustainability as part of their work with students. The highlight for me was definitely visiting the Dickinson College Farm and hearing about all of the ways that the Farm engages the College and the broader community of Carlisle.
I left the workshop with a draft of the framework for “A Transdisciplinary Pathway for Climate Resilience and Equity” at my Institution. The goals for the pathway are: 1) To deliberately weave and connect student sustainability work across curricular and co-curricular spaces, 2) To provide a transdisciplinary pathway for students to approach climate change and sustainability by exposing them to interdisciplinary related to their areas of interest, regardless of their major, and 3) To link the academic pathway of the students to community partners and their work in a way that is systematic, thoughtful, and centers equity. It is a rare moment in academia when you have two days to think about how to build something new. While my workshop goals were broader than a single class, I found that the structure of the workshop, the lively collaborative space and the interdisciplinary and place-based nature of the activities conducive to the creative work that I needed to do.