Environmental Studies Course Research Articles

Safeguarding the enthusiasm for environmental studies: small is even more beautiful than before

Several strategies ought to be considered to reduce the disillusionment and potentially paralyzing impact of the current political climate and anti-environmental stance of the US administration, which risk diminishing both environmental activism and the attractiveness of environmental studies courses. Examples demonstrate the potentials for refocusing both environmental activism and education on subnational levels, broadening the appeal of participation in environmental groups by bolstering socio-emotive rewards, capitalizing on the increasing convergence of environmental and corporate interests through internships, and linking environmental education more closely with subjects less vulnerable to the current mood. Additional efforts could be focused on bringing conservatives into environmental activism through a reorientation of environmental communications to correspond more closely to their interests (e.g., hunting and its dependence on habitat conservation) and their distinctive moral-value orientations.

Animal Metaphors Revisited: New Uses of Art, Literature, and Science in an Environmental Studies Course

Animal Metaphors Revisited: New Uses of Art, Literature, and Science in an Environmental Studies Course

Animal Metaphors Revisited: New Uses of Art, Literature, and Science in an Environmental Studies Course

Abstract This article describes a team-taught environmental studies course called Animal Metaphors. Focusing on animal metaphors in literature and film, the course emphasizes various cognitive and perceptual biases that lead humans to place ourselves above and beyond nature, making us more likely to engage in practices destructive to the environment. Whereas the first iteration of the course underscored various ways in which humans are less rational or moral than we imagine, the new iteration shifted more of the focus to what inspires and motivates humans, gives us emotional resilience, and best creates conditions for mental well-being as we cooperate and collaborate. This seemed an appropriate tack to take in an age commonly referred to as the “Anthropocene.” We thus continued to examine our status as evolved animals while also calling more attention to spiritual or ecstatic experience, music, humor, and the uniquely human ability for shared intentionality.

Students' academic performance in environmental studies: an empirical study of different groups of secondary school graduates

ABSTRACTThe Hong Kong education system has undergone a dramatic change in its secondary and tertiary level of education. A single public examination for senior secondary education namely Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE) was adopted to replace two previously used examinations in 2012. As a result, all higher education institutes in Hong Kong admitted different groups of secondary graduates into the same cohort in 2012 for sub-degree programmes. This study investigated the academic performance of students from different secondary schooling systems in an environmental studies course. Questionnaire survey data and the assessment results of a compulsory course of the students were used for this study. Results indicated significant differences in academic performance in the environmental studies course between three different groups of students. The students that completed a three-year senior secondary education outperformed their counterparts who completed the pre-associate degree and four-year senior secondary education in the environmental course assessment results. Students' environmental attitudes were positively correlated with academic performance on the environmental course, suggesting that students with better environmental attitudes performed better in the environmental studies course.

Embodying the path of sustainability: reflections on “learning to juggle” in environmental pedagogy

We often use juggling as an everyday metaphor for balancing multiple interests, which pertains to thinking about sustainability, yet to date its potential for environmental pedagogy has not been evaluated. Here, I provide some lessons learned while teaching students to juggle as part of a senior environmental studies course at the University of Waterloo over a 4-year period (2009–2012, n = 289 students). I begin by briefly reviewing four benefits of teaching environmental studies students how to juggle: (1) it embodies system thinking, (2) it grounds environmental metaphors, (3) it helps to transcend paradigms, and (4) it promotes well-being. I then provide preliminary support for these claims from a survey of my students in 2012. With these lessons and some caveats in mind, I conclude that learning to juggle is a wonderful embodied metaphor for nurturing students’ reflections about sustainability, so I encourage other environmental studies educators to consider it within their courses.

Intergenerational Learning and Transformative Leadership for Sustainable Futures by Peter Blaze Corcoran and Brandon P. Hollingshead

Book Reviews 215 Intergenerational Learning and Transformative Leadership for Sustainable Futures Peter Blaze Corcoran and Brandon P. Hollingshead, editors (2014). The Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 431 pages. $95.00 (hardback); ISBN: 978-90-8686-242-8. ______________________________________________________________ How can environmental education, intergenerational learning and transformative leadership intersect to create a better future for mankind? This big question recurs throughout this timely edited collection as the chapters explore these different facets through diverse cultural settings. The fourth edited volume of the Dutch government-supported series on education and learning in the context of sustainability, this volume attempts to address critical questions such as: what is the role of intergenerational learning and transformative leadership in meeting the challenges of today’s global community? What are the necessary ethical frameworks, methodologies, curricula and tools for advancing and strengthening such education? With little available literature in intergenerational learning in the context of environmental education, this book represents an important contribution in this emerging area of inquiry. The book features a total of 30 chapters divided into three parts. Part one, entitled “Principles,” consists of eight chapters providing the key principles that set the theoretical and conceptual foundation for the book. The various chapters providing case analyses of higher institutional initiatives for sustainability education in this section further provide reflections on the purpose of higher education in an age of urgent need for sustainable futures. Part Two, entitled “Perspectives,” comprises eight chapters exploring a range of intergenerational learning and transformative leadership concerns and propositions, such as methodologies and approaches to facilitate intergenerational learning, and practical tools to foster leadership. More examples of global-to-local initiatives are presented in Part Three, which is entitled “Praxis.” Among its 14 chapters, eight focus on university centers on environment and sustainable development and their projects/programs. These descriptions and evaluations of university centers from different continents are particularly beneficial for educators who wish to learn how other university centers for environment and sustainable development grow their initiatives, build intergenerational environmental studies courses, foster collaboration and develop networking. In the remaining chapters, discussions range from international networks such as the role of UNESCO networks in facilitating regional cooperation for sustainable development, to descriptions and reflections on specific intergenerational projects. For example, a chapter describes the Buddy Experiment project under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Earth Charter International, where senior IUCN members are paired with young activists in intergenerational learning and mentoring. Book Reviews 216 Diversity serves as a dominant theme throughout the volume. The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, affirms in the Forward of the book that this is a publication that offers an opportunity to “grasp the vitality, breadth and variety of ideas and practices in Education for Sustainable Development across the world” (17). The book’s diverse representations of cultures, as showcased in the global and local initiatives, broaden insights into how traditional ecological knowledge and socio-cultural understandings should inherently be part of the discourse on sustainability included in learning and leadership. The authors of the Introduction drive a powerful point that there is no shortage of effective leadership but there is a need to cultivate transformative leadership for sustainability, which they emphasize is an adaptive process always manifesting itself “within a particular context, [which] employs local knowledge and respects local needs and customs” (29). A respect for diversity and recognition of the learning potential in local knowledge is what makes a truly effective transformative leader. For someone in the intergenerational education field, I see the incorporation of intergenerationality in learning and leadership as a significant contribution of new ideas into the field. In the spirit of diversity, the book has juxtaposed and expanded the different understandings of intergenerational learning, from the first step of deciding who is included in intergenerational learning, to the directions that intergenerational concerns are heading. For instance, as rightly pointed out in the Introduction, there is a need to move beyond the tendency to interpret intergenerationality as a focus only on children and youth, ignoring and marginalizing elders as vulnerable and disabled. In the age of global longevity, there is an increasingly urgent need to adopt a new perspective on the older generations as valuable...

Factors Influencing Students’ Choice of Elective Science Courses: A Case Study from the American University of Sharjah

Scientific studies in higher education is becoming an increasing matter of discussion. The American University of Sharjah (AUS) encourages the scientific literacy of students who are not enrolled in science or engineering majors by including two required science courses in the curriculum. The courses of choice include biology, chemistry, environmental sciences, astronomy and physics. This study investigates the factors that contribute to students’ choice when selecting science courses at AUS. A survey comprised of open-ended questions as well as quantitative enquiries was administered to students enrolled in environmental science (ENV 100), aiming to investigate the main reason behind their choice. The results of this two year study showed significantly positive attitudes toward the course contents and the benefit of the course towards their future careers. Furthermore, it reveals that students are highly influenced by previous experiences with subjects, professors’ popularity, peer recommendation, their abilities in memorization, and skills in math. The study reveals that the main concern for students is related to the high amount of information and details that the course content covers. In addition, the possibility of obtaining a higher grade was also studied by observing the grade point average (GPA) for science courses over a period of four years. Nonetheless, the main factor for course choice was their genuine interest for the subject matter, which is this case study, was the environmental studies course.

Environmental justice: insights from an interdisciplinary instructional workshop

Environmental justice recognizes the connections between social and environmental concerns and interrogates power dynamics related to environmental issues. Courses in environmental studies and the geosciences provide an opportunity, and perhaps an obligation to explore environmental justice, but few resources exist to help instructors do so effectively. A 2013 interdisciplinary workshop at Carleton College sponsored by InTeGrate—Interdisciplinary Teaching of Geoscience for a Sustainable Future—convened instructors interested in environmental justice as a topic of instruction and produced a series of insights and challenges for doing so. Environmental justice instruction provides opportunities to tackle tough issues of race, class, and privilege in a variety of disciplinary contexts particularly in geoscience courses, where course content regarding hazards, climate change, and other topics may contain social justice components which are not often included in instruction. Teaching environmental justice, though, presents a number of challenges: how can instructors teach the conceptual and theoretical explanations of environmental justice while giving students the necessary tools to address environmental injustices? The InTeGrate workshop provided insights for addressing these challenges and developing materials for future pedagogical use in a variety of higher education contexts.

Influence of an Environmental Studies Course on Attitudes of Undergraduates at an Engineering University

Studies suggest that at engineering universities, where the percentage of males and engineering majors is high, pro-environmental attitudes are likely to be weak and may not change. The 15-item New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale was used to measure differences in student attitudes before and after an environmental studies course. Results revealed students held more pro-environmental attitudes about the validity of the ecological crisis, the existence of resource constraints, and the delicacy of nature's balance after the course. Students did not shift their views regarding the domination of humans over the environment or their belief in human ingenuity to overcome resource limits. Engineering majors showed weaker endorsement of the NEP compared to non-engineering majors, but the increase in their endorsement after the course was statistically significant.

Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya by Elliot Fratkin

Reviewed by: Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya by Elliot Fratkin Peter D. Little Elliot Fratkin. Laibon: An Anthropologist’s Journey with Samburu Diviners in Kenya. Lanham, Md.: Altamira Press. xiv + 179. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $26.99. Paper. Elliot Fratkin has written an insightful, enjoyable, and very readable book about his fieldwork and life-long friendship with a family of diviners (laibon) in northern Kenya. The work is strongly autobiographical, recounting how a young, rebellious American anthropologist in the 1970s found himself conducting dissertation research among Ariaal, a Samburu-related nomadic community of northern Kenya. His original goal was to study Turkana pastoralists of northwestern Kenya, but he abandoned that idea after finding them not particularly hospitable to the notion of being studied by an anthropologist. As the author makes clear, Turkana are not known to be a “warm and fuzzy” people or to welcome outsiders. Fratkin’s alternative was to study another Nilotic group just north of Turkana in southwestern Ethiopia. However, he only made it as far as Marsabit town, a dusty Kenyan outpost about 150 kilometers south of the Ethiopian border, when he learned of a military coup in the country that forced him to abandon this option. Fortuitously, in Marsabit he almost immediately met up with a young man who introduced him to the nearby Ariaal pastoralists and their laibon (diviner). Unmarried and youthful, Fratkin was adopted by the laibon’s family and quickly struck up a series of friendships with young men around his same age who made up the so-called warrior (il murran) age set of the community. What emerges from these relationships is an anthropological story of the trials and tribulations of fieldwork, the creativeness and practices of a people coping with a difficult physical environment, and the humanity of a community characterized by similar emotions of love, anger, and compassion that define human nature. In order to study a mobile group, Fratkin himself adopted a nomadic existence. He often went on foot to herding camps for days at a time, living among young herders and consuming plenty of fresh milk and meat. His narrations of these encounters, including his first experiences with raw cow blood and an angry lion, are both humorous and informative. In his fieldwork he also followed around the laibon as he performed rituals and aided individuals seeking either medical or spiritual advice, and we learn much about local belief systems among Ariaal and Samburu. With an old Land Rover, Fratkin also assisted the laibon and other community [End Page 179] members with their transportation needs, including visits to health clinics and relatives both within and outside the district. These are normal requests for an anthropologist in the field, but in Fratkin’s case they often entailed long journeys over sandy camel tracks. It is through these daily routines that Fratkin shows the real value of the participant-observation method. By participating in community life and witnessing and questioning the laibon about his different divination techniques, medicines, and knowledge, the author strikes a deep and meaningful friendship with the laibon and his family. Fratkin truly liked these people, although the diviner’s occasional encounters with excessive liquor consumption and bouts of anger tested both his friendship and patience. And what is equally clear is that the laibon and his son, who remains a good friend of the author’s, also liked him. More than an autobiography, the book is loaded with seasoned insights into a range of topics, such as the role of missionaries and development agencies in the region, local social organization and age set structures, and the disastrous effects of drought (and development programs!) especially since the 1970s. By following the same family and community over thirty-plus years of study, the author shows with considerable detail and personal concern the social and environmental changes that have occurred over this period, many of which, as the book makes clear, have not been very positive for Ariaal. The book will be a great teaching asset for undergraduate courses in cultural anthropology, African studies, research methods, and environmental studies. On a personal note, I currently am using Laibon as a required text in an...

Reading the urban landscape: the case of a campus tour at York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This paper presents a campus tour assignment in a first-year undergraduate environmental studies course at York University, Toronto, Canada. As a pedagogical tool, the assignment enables students to interrogate the dominant narratives of a university’s immediate physical spaces and to apply broader theoretical and practical concepts to their meanings and understandings. An exploration of three sites on the tour is offered as illustrations: a storm water pond, a woodlot, and a native species garden. Complicating the histories of these sites provides entry points for a variety of conversations and debates in reference to environmental sustainability, social justice, and civic engagement. The main objective of the campus tour is to prompt students to move beyond description to analysis and to raise questions about campus features by making connections to historical choices, policy alternatives and self-reflexivity. Many of the ideas presented could be modified for use on other campuses and could invite a larger discursive discussion on social and sustainability issues.

Enhancing college students’ environmental sensibilities through online nature journaling

The increasing alienation of today’s children from the environment has been termed ‘nature-deficit disorder’. Research suggests this disconnect can adversely impact young people’s physical and psychological well-being. This paper explores whether online multimedia journaling about nature can increase the amount of time students spend outdoors, enhancing their environmental awareness and changing their nature-related perceptions. Students in a 60-person introductory environmental studies course at a large midwestern public university in the United States completed weekly online multimedia nature journals for one semester. A survey assessed their experiences. The median survey respondent spent an additional 11–20 minutes outdoors weekly. Seventy-four percent of respondents said that the project increased their awareness of nature, 68% said it changed the way they thought about nature, and 56% said it increased their interest in spending time outdoors. Though these findings are promising, there are some theoretical reasons for questioning their depth and duration.

Environmental education for the masses: lessons from a large, general enrollment environmental studies course

One critical tool for creating an environmentally literate citizenry is to reach students other than those in environmental-related majors in the form of the university-level large introductory environmental studies course. In this study, we relate student academic background to initial and final environmental awareness results. We found that students from a wide range of backgrounds begin with similar motivation for taking the class and uniformly low environmental knowledge. Our results indicate that a low-credit, engaging introductory environmental studies class can strongly impact student awareness independent of diverse learner academic backgrounds. For example, results suggest that students taking the course primarily to meet science breadth requirements and students with a strong previous science background had equivalent initial awareness and course outcomes. The lack of a correlation with background suggests that students are not learning about environmental studies in other classes and reinforces the importance of investing in nonmajors-focused environmental education. Additionally, our findings support the importance of affective learning gains, such as attitude changes, which we term “learning to care”.

Using energy audits and climate action planning as a community-based environmental studies capstone experience at Bowdoin College

Capstone courses in environmental studies and science programs offer the opportunity to develop authentic research experiences situated in real-world community problems that teach students how to manage complex projects, understand stakeholder challenges, collaborate effectively in teams, appreciate interdisciplinarity in real-world contexts, and navigate messy problems first hand. I describe how climate action planning was used as the centerpiece of a newly developed senior-level capstone course in the Environmental Studies Program at Bowdoin College where students and the instructor collaborated as a team of consultants to develop climate action plans for the towns of Brunswick and Topsham, Maine. The course project consisted of three parts: energy audits and greenhouse gas inventories, identification of data gaps and refinement of analysis, and development of climate action plans with specific emission reductions targets and recommendations for achieving them. This capstone experience was successful in helping to achieve several specific learning outcomes, and the challenges encountered offered several useful teachable moments. Overall, students found the senior capstone experience to be a highly valuable part of their undergraduate experience and indicated unanimous strong support for the continued offering of capstone courses in the Environmental Studies Program.

Role of an environmental studies course on the formation of environmental worldviews: a case study of a core curriculum requirement using the NEP Scale

Many universities require coursework in environmental studies or science, with the goal of developing environmental literacy among their graduates. Does enrollment in an environmental issues course have an effect on an undergraduate’s environmental worldview? We assess the role of a required, core curriculum environmental issues course on the environmental worldview formation of undergraduates not majoring in environmental studies or science, using data collected at the University of New England (UNE), Maine, USA. Using a pre- and postcourse design, we administered the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) survey to all enrolled students over an eight-semester interval from 2006 to 2010 (N = 976 paired surveys). Precourse surveys demonstrated that UNE students began the course with a belief system that endorsed an ecological worldview, on average, and that was structured into five domains. Comparison of pre- and postcourse data revealed: (1) students’ level of environmental concern increased significantly in each of five worldview dimensions after taking the course, although effect size varied among the five areas; (2) endorsement of the NEP increased more among students with an initially low level of environmental concern than those with a high level; and (3) students who began the course unsure of their beliefs moved away from uncertainty, indicating worldview clarification through the course. Our results demonstrate that a required, introductory environmental studies course for nonmajors can effectively achieve affective learning goals and develop ecological awareness in a student body characterized by diverse professional objectives and belief systems.

Climate capitalism: global warming and the transformation of the global economy

Confronting climate change is now understood as a problem of 'decarbonising' the global economy: ending our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels. This book explores whether such a transformation is underway, how it might be accelerated, and the complex politics of this process. Given the dominance of global capitalism and free-market ideologies, decarbonisation is dependent on creating carbon markets and engaging powerful actors in the world of business and finance. Climate Capitalism assesses the huge political dilemmas this poses, and the need to challenge the entrenched power of many corporations, the culture of energy use, and global inequalities in energy consumption. Climate Capitalism is essential reading for anyone wanting to better understand the challenge we face. It will also inform a range of student courses in environmental studies, development studies, international relations, and business programmes.

Sustainability and the City: CCNY’s New M.S. Program

Reforming curricula has been likened to relocating graveyards. The implication, presumably, is that cur ricular reform should be done only when necessary, should be carried out respectfully, and demands a good deal of time and care. The creation of a new Sustainability in the Urban Environment program at City College of New York (CCNY)—a program that will graduate its first class in June 2011—certainly exhibited these characteristics. Given the dramatically increasing interest in sustainability and cleantech—in the academic world, the corporate world, the media world, and the planet in general—some sort of serious academic offering in sustainability seemed a virtual necessity. Of course it had to be done respectfully, given that much of the terrain of sustainability was at least partially covered, in differing ways, by existing programs and/or courses in environmental studies, earth sciences, environmental engineering, economics, management, law, and policy. We had to make clear that a new master’s degree program in Sustainability is not in any sense a replacement of existing disciplines, but rather a new focal point that draws heavily from the insights of these existing disciplines and juxtaposes these insights in ways that can be extremely useful in working toward solutions of real-world problems.

Review: Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality and the Politics of the Natural

Review: Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality and the Politics of the Natural By Noel Sturgeon Reviewed by Ryder W. Miller Sturgeon, Noel. Environmentalism in Popular Culture: Gender, Race, Sexuality and the Politics of the Natural. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2008. 240pp. ISBN 9780816525812. US$25.95, paper. Environmentalism in Popular Culture by Noel Sturgeon is a brilliant and challenging text inspired by contemporary issues, but may be too critical of a discussion starter. One does not here find the voice of the ecologist or old school environmentalist. Instead one finds the icons and totems of the environmental field being challenged, and for some newer readers degraded, maybe beyond repair. The author is making way for environmental justice and eco-feminism, but missing is the link between conservation and sustainability. There is almost no mention of preservation and endangered species or any listing of them in the index. Instead, there is a new take on environmentalism that does not understand the old battle lines. Unfortunately, Sturgeon seems to be throwing out the baby with the bath water. The child may have grown up, but we should not discard the child left in us. Challenged here are environmental icons like the ecological Indian, space ship Earth, and nature, contrasted with technological culture, pristine nature as a possibility, and frontier mythology. These concepts may no longer be sacrosanct, but they did serve their purpose, and Sturgeon should know that the environmental movement will be lesser without them. The book is certainly thought provoking and it does get one to question the older ideas in environmentalism, but if this is more than a discussion generator, the impact may be harmful. The book would succeed in a high level environmental studies course if the ideas herein are contained within an academic institutional setting or at least contrasted with the ideas of people who have real world experience. The work is very critical and it does not provide substitutes for what is being lost in the argumentation. Sturgeon leaves that up to the reader. The book does challenge one to think more deeply about cultural icons, but it neglects to mention their worth. It also does not challenge what seems like an environmental backlash in the mass media. We now live in an age green baiting, culture wars, and mass extinction. One may find missing a more conservative or traditional approach rather than the revolutionary ideas presented. A viable alternative is not presented, but the field has opened itself to new voices who may not appreciate or be familiar with the longer environmental tradition. Sturgeon does far more than get the reader to pause and think; she seems to be asking for a fresh start. A new environmental revolution should not forget the accomplishments of their forebears, even if they have mostly been white forefathers. Ryder W. Miller , Freelance environmental and science reporter who has been published in Sierra Magazine, California Coast & Ocean, California Wild, and Hydrosphere. Electronic Green Journal, Issue 29, Winter 2009, ISSN:1076-7975

Whispering Wires: The Tragic Tale of an American Bootlegger by Philip Metcalfe

 Reviews Where the Great River Bends is a tale of Old and New West, with cowboys and Indians replaced by windsurfers, dams, and turbines. The book’s major failing is that Native people are represented as figures of the past, rather than contemporary agents with a continued stake in the river. Despite this, the book would be useful for environmental studies courses or as a travel guide, with appendices that include mile-post markers, identification of flora and fauna, and a list of maps that orient readers in time and space. Multiple bibliographies provide sources for further investigation,while stupendous images will likely make you yearn to visit Wallula Gap. Donna Sinclair Center for Columbia River History WHISPERING WIRES: THE TRAGIC TALE OF AN AMERICAN BOOTLEGGER by Philip Metcalfe Inkwater Press, Portland, 2007. Photographs, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 356 pages. $29.95 paper. The great naive experiment of prohibition, previously approved as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, became the working law of the land in January 1920. Ten months later, voters elevated the occasionally sober Warren G. Harding to the presidency. Mixed feelings, in other words, prevailed from the beginning of the so-called “Dry Years” of American history. “Purity people,” the designation favored by author Philip Metcalfe, welcomed a heaven-sent reform in human behavior. Others, including persons disinclined to give up strong drink, business interests out for profit, and cynics in general, adopted a more seasoned outlook. Summing up the bizarre record of an entire era, Metcalfe leaves no doubt as to the sodden result: “there were now more sources of liquor than ever before”(p.287).Although the basic story is well known, Whispering Wires provides substantial new material, derived from extensive research in court records, government archives, and private papers. Metcalfe focuses on his appealing anti-hero, Puget Sound bootlegger Roy Olmstead. Dismissed from the Seattle police force during one of the city’s manufactured election-year moral crusades,Olmsteadunderstoodtheimportance of geography. British Columbia was only a fast voyage away. Contacts and routes had long since been developed by criminal elements skilled in the smuggling of drugs and undocumented immigrants. Liquor remained a legal substance north of the Forty-ninth parallel. Exporters based inVancouver andVictoria had no qualms about selling whiskey for ultimate consumption south of the border. Olmstead’s particular contribution lay in the businesslike refinement of established commercial patterns. He made prime use of modern technology: the telephone,radio,andhigh-poweredspeedboats able to easily outrun the tubs preferred by the minions of the law. And he delivered only the highest quality whiskey, at competitive prices, to satisfied customers, including the Seattle Rainier Club and airplane manufacturer William E. Boeing. Olmsteadwasanew-stylecelebritycriminal, the product of a system in which a large portion of the population saw nothing wrong with the breaking of inconvenient statutes.“The dealer in illicit liquor,” writes Metcalfe, “inhabited a fixed abode,owned a comfortable,even a luxurious home, had a family, circulated in society, and in some cases belonged to the best clubs where he rubbed elbows with judges and politicians ”(p.7).Business was good,Olmstead and his confederates taking in, according to courtroom allegation,well over a hundred thousand dollars per month. In addition to being well supplied, customers were protected from the police, as the municipal Dry Squad occupied a leading place on the bootleg payroll. Close to being a respectable citizen, Olmstead certainly outclassed his antagonists in  OHQ vol. 111, no. 1 federal legal circles. The thousands of newly appointed anti-liquor agents were, by some accident of legislative procedure, excluded from normal civil service rules. Washington Senator Wesley Jones — a figure of venerable seniority regularly referred to, in his own time and in this book,as“the Senator”— advocated prohibition while supping at the qualificationsbe -damned patronage trough.Thomas Revelle, his hand-picked U.S.Attorney on Puget Sound, was a former preacher turned minimally competent real estate lawyer. Roy Lyle, the regional prohibition director,secured recognition among F.B.I. investigators as “practically a mental moron.” Enforcement chief William Whitney, a previously disgraced local politico, manufactured evidence and manipulated witnesses . Protected from removal by Senator Jones,this hapless trio failed miserably...

Designing the Sustainable Foodshed: A Cross-Disciplinary Undergraduate Environmental Studies Course

This article demonstrates the educational value of an undergraduate course that integrates design and the liberal arts to teach about ecological systems, using study of the university campus as the means to connect theory and practice. It presents the curricular goals, objectives, results, and lessons learned from a qualitative case study of a cross-disciplinary course that required design and liberal arts students to develop innovative solutions to improve the sustainability of The New School’s food system. Student and faculty evaluations suggest that an integrated design and liberal arts course can be an effective and enjoyable method to learn about sustainability and urban systems; and it helps students learn different techniques for research, problem-solving, and communication.