Bringing Educational Relevancy to the First-Year College Experience by Bearing Witness to Social Problems

Abstract

An environmental learning community (LC) is presented as a working model that brings relevancy of higher education to first-year college students. The LC includes two primarily lecture courses—one in biology, one in economics—that have been specifically designed to focus on environmental issues from different perspectives. These courses share the same, first-year students. Each student researches an aspect of a particular environmental/health issue in Toms River, New Jersey, where there is a groundwater pollution problem that may be associated with a childhood cancer cluster found there. As part of their research, the students are taken to Toms River, Trenton, New Jersey, and Manhattan, where they listen to, and interview cancer victims, community activists, corporate officials, attorneys, developers, state and federal regulators, and others connected in some way with the Toms River environmental/human health situation. The students tour a Superfund site in Toms River, as well as a water analysis facility used by state officials in Trenton. The LC also includes a third course that is not taught using a traditional lecture format, but instead is student interactive, and allows for discussion and reflection regarding the environmental theme and the experiential component of the Toms River Project. The effectiveness of the LC with and without the Toms River Project was analyzed using the same survey questions in 1998 (without the Toms River Project), and 1999 (with the project). This LC was also compared with the other LCs presented during those years as part of the Wagner College First-Year Program. Results clearly show that the LC dramatically improved from 1998 to 1999. The 1999 environmental LC also stood out favorably when compared with the other LCs. We conclude that, when the experiential component of a learning community is relevant to the theme of the LC, is project-based, and involves faculty, the experience improves student interest, brings importance to the lecture material, stimulates critical thinking, and increases student understanding of civic responsibility.