ENVS 295: Environmental Engagement
Lewis & Clark College | Spring 2020
Sharon Avina
Course Summary
ENVS 295 is a course centered around engagement. Engagement can be defined by these following characteristics: Conversation toward action, a search for more truthful knowledge through the “coproduction of knowledge,” self-evaluation based on newfound information, accepting there is a plurality of truths, and keeping an open mind about other people’s perspectives. So far, while taking this course, I have learned about the importance of conversation as a step towards action. Engaging through conversation is not only about talking and listening; it is also about taking the information you are presented with, along with your prior knowledge, and finding ways to apply that knowledge toward finding solutions together. The values I have learned from engagement have allowed me to accomplish applying this knowledge to my work in ENVS 295 through a series of posts on this website, alongside my peers.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.
Through our project, we would like to honor Green Empowerment’s values of partnership, engagement, capacity building, and impact expansion. Consequently, our goals correlate directly to these four values. Our goals for this project are to: Build partnerships by sharing various perspectives on the work Green Empowerment (GE) does through the […]
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What do we know about the “how”? When learning about the “how” earlier in the semester, we came to the conclusion that it takes components of the “who” and the “what” to come to an overall conclusion of how to approach an issue or topic. Through our Broockman and Kalla […]
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Background Green Empowerment is an organization that approaches their work by incorporating four main values to meet their goals. These four values are partnership, engagement, capacity building, and impact expansion. Partnership This value focuses on partnering with organizations based in-country “to implement renewable energy, clean water and complementary sanitation, environmental […]
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Reconnaissance Trip Preparation In ENVS 295, we kicked off the semester by focusing on our reconnaissance trip. This trip was organized to get the class to really dive deep into what ENVS 295 is all about: Environmental engagement. In preparation for the places we were visiting, we had to read […]
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What + Who = How Our What’s are the controversy surrounding solar energy and other renewable energy sources that Green Empowerment helps implement in rural communities. Our Who is our Green Empowerment partners, as well as, Green Empowerment itself. One possible How approach that connects our What to our Who […]
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Our Focused Readings The Hidden Tribes study consists of a number of questions on your views about the world and places you into one of the seven profiles (Progressive Activists, Traditional Liberals, Passive Liberals, Politically Disengaged, Moderates, Traditional Conservatives, Devoted Conservatives). The Passive Liberals tribe is the largest as 26% […]
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With technology playing a part in many of our everyday lives, it can feel overwhelming to constantly be alerted by notifications, messages, and daily news from around the world. Technology delivers information at such a constant rate, that this absorption is reflected into how we respond to much of what […]
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Effective Action The Introduction to Effective Altruism reading from Tuesday went into detail about the three criteria for effective action: great in scale (effects as many people as possible), highly neglected (few other people are working to address the problem), and highly solvable (additional resources will do a great deal […]
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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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