ENVS 295: Environmental Engagement
Lewis & Clark College | Spring 2020
Paige Myers
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Course Summary
ENVS 295 is an engagement focused class in the Environmental Studies program at Lewis and Clark college. It aims to educate students about methods of communication about environmental issues and ways of engaging at different levels with a myriad of actors in the realm of environmental studies. Thus far in ENVS 295 we have discussion various forms of engagement and their effectiveness as well as the current climate surrounding the polarization and politicization of topics related to climate change. My partnership group is the Hood River Forest Collaborative, also known as the Stew Crew. This organization aims to bring together stakeholders who are involved in the Hood River Forest, including members of the USFS, landowners, loggers and various other individuals and organizations who desire to have a voice about decisions being made in regards to the forest. Our class made a reconnaissance trip and met personally with this partner as well as the Oregon Farm Bureau and PCUN. I look forward to future learning and the application of skills surrounding environmental engagement.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 project aims to increase the public’s participation with the Hood River Forest Collaborative, and to help them identify and engage with stakeholders. We plan to do this by helping the Collaborative develop an online presence, through which they can host events, share knowledge, and engage in outreach to invite […]
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When developing engagement practices, determining the specific issues to be addressed and the stakeholders that need to be invited to the table is critical important. Just as important as these two steps is determining how to best foster engagement between these identified stakeholders -who may have competing values- towards the […]
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Throughout ENVS 295 we have closely studied many aspects of engagement, including specific ways to focus engagement with the aim to make it more successful. One of the critical steps to better engagement practices is to focus on labeling and including stakeholders (known as the “Who”) who may otherwise be […]
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How are Environmental Ideas Communicated? How should we communicate? What is most effective? What makes an approach more successful? There are three outlined methods of environmental communication, which present different engagement strategies with varying degrees of success. The first is the Classical (Deficit) Model, which posits that the public’s lack […]
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Stakeholder Identification In order to give stakeholders a voice in any project they must first be identified. There are many ways of identifying individuals and groups as stakeholders (Luyet et al. 2012). It is incredibly important to properly identify stakeholders, as they are the ones most impacted by the outcomes […]
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Is Post-Truth the new normal? Issues of Post Truth In his article, “Trump is Waiting and He Is Ready“, Thomas Edsall writes in the New York Times about an increasingly polarized political and rhetorical world plagued by the notion of post-truth. Using Donald Trump as a situated example, he details […]
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What is Effective Action/Altruism? Effective Action/Altruism was developed as a concept in order to better organize the work needed to help others in a way that is most efficient. Within this idea, projects are efficient when they are: Great in scale Highly neglected Highly solvable While effective action does […]
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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 […]
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