ENVS 295: Environmental Engagement
Lewis & Clark College | Spring 2020
Lindsey Dickmeyer
Course Summary
The classes that make up the Environmental Studies major at Lewis & Clark give us a variety of information and perspectives that help us gain a wide knowledge of environmental issues. ENVS 295, known as Environmental Engagement, helps prepare us to use this knowledge and experience to include the general public in discussions about these issues. Through taking this class, we learn valuable tools in effective forms of engagement and navigating a variety of world perspectives after graduating. So far, I have been able to accomplish the beginning stages of working with an environmental partner organization, as well as creating my own profile and posts on our ENVS website. I've been able to learn about the what, who, and how of environmental engagement by looking at concepts such as effective action, post-truth, the divided who, and the dialogic model of communication. I've also learned about different environmental organizations in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest and their perspectives. By taking this class, I am preparing myself for a world of environmental engagement outside college.Engagement Partnership
One important part of ENVS 295 is an environmental engagement partnership with a Portland-area organization. The page linked above offers information and resources I helped compile for my organizational partner this semester.Engagement Project
Building on the engagement partnership above, our team developed a related engagement project in collaboration with the partner. The page linked above offers details on our engagement project.My Course Posts
I've done a series of posts throughout the semester related to readings, our partnership, our project, and my thoughts on environmental engagement. See below for all posts I've published, in reverse order by date.
Our identified goals for our Engagement Project with Sustainable Northwest are the following: Create a space with a successful two-way dialogue between current students and those who currently work in the natural resource sector, like those with Sustainable Northwest Allow for the opportunity for students currently interested in natural resource […]
Read More
The Pacific Northwest hosts a multitude of different types of people, with their own views, experiences, and values. It is no different than the United States as a whole, where beliefs can be largely separated into what is known as The Six Hidden Tribes of America. Across divisions of class, […]
Read More
Introduction Sustainable Northwest is an organization that does a great deal of facilitation when it comes to natural resource management in the Pacific Northwest. With programs that work with water, forests, energy, and rangelands, the organization works on a multitude of projects that address problems and solutions around the Northwest. […]
Read More
Introduction Environmental Engagement, or ENVS 295, was once an optional class in the Environmental Studies department. Of course, this was long ago when I was yet to arrive on this campus in Fall 2018, but the course has cemented itself as a necessary and important aspect in the field of […]
Read More
How do we go about engagement? After addressing the significance of “what and who” in regards to engagement, the proceeding concern is “how?” During week 8 of Jim Proctor’s course —Environmental Engagement— our focus was drawn to how engagement happens. To foreground our understanding, we began by looking at the […]
Read More
Divided Who For the “who” portion of Environmental Engagement, our class read a multitude of articles, even taking a few quizzes to evaluate the different types of people and their attitudes that we engage with. The Hidden Tribes of America quiz categorizes Americans into seven categories based on their political […]
Read More
Post-Truths, Multiple Realities and the Trump Campaign The notion of “post-truths” is tremendously relevant within the political arena, leading to extreme polarization and stunted political progress. As Thomas B. Edsall in his article “Trump Is Waiting and He Is Ready,” Democrats and Republicans “view the same reality through a different […]
Read More
Effective Altruism With regard to contemporary global challenges that we often feel as if we have little to no power in helping find the solutions to, effective altruism aims to serve as a response to this disheartenment. In Jim Proctor’s ENVS 295 class on Tuesday, February 18, we discussed readings […]
Read More
CRITFC Presentation As part of our Environmental Engagement Reconnaissance Trip, we visited the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) and listened to a presentation given by Rob Lothrop. Lothrop is an alumnus of Lewis & Clark Law School, and studied natural and environmental law. Joining CRITFC in 1981, Rob began […]
Read More