Ithaca College

The Partnership for Sustainable Education is pleased to announce the 2010 sustainability-into-curriculum mini-grant awardees: Carole Dennis, Cyndy Scheibe, and David Turkon.

Carole Dennis will develop a two-week module on sustainability into Introduction to Occupational Science, a course required for all Occupational Therapy majors. “Since its inception, this course has included content related to social justice, with an emphasis on occupational justice. Occupational justice recognizes that individuals have the right to be free from social, political, and economic policies that prevent their participation in activities that are important to their individual and collective health and well-being, or that force their participation in unhealthy activities. This content is very directly related to sustainability and sustainable living; however this link has not been explicit within the course in the past. This module will expand and make explicit content related to sustainable living and health in this course.”

Cyndy Scheibe will incorporate sustainability issues throughout Special Topics in Media Literacy: Media Constructions of Environmental Issues which she will co-teach this coming Fall. This course is offered through Culture and Communication program in the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies. The course will use the three media literacy kits on the environment developed by Look Sharp, of which Cyndy is Executive Director. This mini-grant will allow her to also include such sustainability issues as “those related to intergenerational impacts and equity, with a focus on both national and regional perspectives (e.g., by having students develop their individual research projects around media coverage of a sustainability issue in their hometown or home state). “ She will also “identify and digitize a range of media documents related to sustainability that could be used by all interested faculty at Ithaca College.”

David Turkon will enhance the component on community in sustainable development in Applied Anthropology and determine the feasibility of creating a new course on sustainable community development. “The vast majority of work that applied anthropologists engage in is carried out at the ‘community’ level and it is thus important to fully understand what constitutes community. Failure to fully consider community dynamics commonly results in projects that are unevenly administered and which exacerbate or even create social divisions. Indeed, health, agricultural, conservation, economic and other interventions quite commonly employ selection methods that do not account for the wide range of factions that may be present in any geographic setting.” Applied anthropologists have methods that can identify such factions and also community assets. “Such methodological considerations can strongly inform development programming and processes in ways that ensure inclusion and sustainable outcomes.”

We look forward to seeing the outcomes of these wonderfully diverse initiatives at next year’s Finger Lakes Project workshop!