College classes and competitions for sustainability

"How do you teach sustainability?" There are thousands and thousands of people walking around right now thinking about this thing called "sustainability," each with their own definitions and trying to make their lives more "sustainable." What are they doing? And what are they doing that's good? And what in any of that is actually teachable at a university?

Our three guests this week, Seth Baum, Greg Lankenau, and Seth Wilberding, have worked on just this problem. Both of them are graduate students in Penn State's Department of Geography and have worked with college students on sustainability.

Seth Baum and Greg Lankenau have taught Introduction to Sustainability, a general education course that invites students to start thinking ecologicalyl and the development of practices in their own lives that not only reduce their footprints but bring empowerment through projects as varied as being a vegetarian for a semester to developing proposals for the State College Borough Council on how to effect a composting program for restaurants.

Seth Wilberding was a lecturer in Landscape Architecture (LARCH) before beginning the Ph.D. program in Geography. When he was in LARCH, he served as one of the faculty advisers for Penn State's 2007 Solar Decathlon team. Their house, the MorningStar (pictured at right) earned 4th place out of 20 teams. The design, implementation, and educational team that created the MorningStar was comprised of hundreds of students, the core team of which crossed the Center for Sustainability, four colleges and included about fifty students and ten faculty. What did Seth, the other faculty, and students learn? What can we learn from them?

Join us this Friday, March 5th from 4-5 on the Lion 90.7 to find out.