New Hudson River Ecology Course Piloted by 14
Universities
Barnard College is Leader
By Emily Sherwood, Ph.D.
Although many New Yorkers’ only hands-on experience
with the Hudson River has been on a Circle Line cruise, all
that will change for a lucky group of college students if some
visionary educators realize their dream. This summer, an interdisciplinary
team of 36 professors and researchers from 14 New York State
colleges and universities piloted a five week summer field
study course on the Hudson for rising college juniors using
a curriculum that combines ecology, geology, art history, political
science, economics, archeology, anthropology, and more.
River Summer 2005, made possible by a $76,000 grant from the
Teagle Foundation, was not for those craving anonymity or four
star lodgings. Each week, a revolving team of eight educators
lived, studied, and taught elbow-to-elbow aboard the research
vessel Seawolf as it made its way from the Upper Hudson
to Manhattan and ultimately completed its journey in the Adirondacks,
for a total of five weekly teaching modules. When replicated
for students, possibly as early as Summer ’06, such a
close-knit teaching and learning space will be “a good
thing… It disconnects them from the world that they’re
used to and makes them cohesive as a group,” explains
Jeff Miller, Professor of Environmental Law at Pace Law School
and participant in the Manhattan River Summer module.
River Summer will attempt to imbue students with an interest
in preserving the Hudson as a natural resource and a cultural
environment. According to co-chair Stephanie Pfirman, professor
and chair of the Environmental Science Department at Barnard
College, the future of the Hudson as a working river lies in “finding
a balance between development and the environment.” Ultimately,
Pfirman and her colleagues hope to create more aware global
citizens while encouraging greater numbers of young people
to pursue careers in environmental science. “Research
shows that when you learn about where you live and work, it
really promotes a sense of civic responsibility and engagement,” notes
Pfirman, a geologist whose high school field experience on
the Hudson piqued her interest in a model “where you
teach and learn in your own back yard.”
Key to an understanding of the Hudson River and its complexity
is River Summer’s inter-disciplinary approach to teaching
and learning. Professors were encouraged not just to lecture
at their colleagues, but to interact and learn from each other’s
expertise. “All along our journey, people were saying, ‘I
see how what you do relates to what I do’ and making
a connection,” says Tim Kenna, Director of River Summer
and Associate Research Scientist of the Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory in Palisades. “We’re all looking at
the river but many of us are looking at it through very different
lenses…The goal is to get someone to look through your
lens and for you to look through theirs.” The field geologist
and art historian found such a synergy in Kaaterskill Cove
in the Catskills. The art historian was fascinated to learn
about the underlying structure and history of the local bedrock,
while the geologist participated a sketching exercise on the
exact perch where Hudson River painters developed many of their
masterpieces. And Ted Eismeier, Professor of Political Science
at Hamilton College, who participated in three of the five
pilot modules, hopes to engage his colleagues and students
in a passion for the politics of the Hudson River. His fundamental
research question is, “How do we accomplish transformation
of the Hudson from an industrial river to a post-industrial
river while revitalizing cities like Poughkeepsie that haven’t
benefited too much from the post-industrial era?”
Just as the Hudson River can be viewed through multiple lenses,
River Summer seeks to be more than an interactive learning
laboratory and actually to model best practice in pedagogy.
According to Lisa Son, Assistant Professor of Psychology at
Barnard College, who is in charge of the evaluative component
of the project, teaching students to become active learners,
or “metacognitive learners” in the jargon of the
psychologist, is yet another goal of this project. “In
the classroom, students are generally passive,” remarks
Son. “Here, they become active learners, taking control
of their own learning.”
So what’s next for River Summer? Following detailed
oral and written feedback by participants in each of the five
modules, the researchers hope to iron out any logistical and
instructional snafus and design a five-week summer course for
one or more groups of 16 rising college juniors. The course
would be offered to students from the 36 affiliated members
of the new Environmental Consortium of Hudson Valley Colleges
and Universities (ECHVCU), perhaps as early as Summer 2006.
Due to limited room on the Seawolf and the desire to
provide the experience to as many deserving students as possible,
participants would alternate between the ship and land but
would travel and study together. The chairs are seeking additional
grant monies to provide fellowships so that the program is
all-inclusive.
And long term? “We’d like to gear this up so that
it’s running every summer and we have lots of faculty
who are participating in it,” says Pfirman. “After
that, it really has potential for implementation in other places.
It doesn’t have to be just on a river.”#
