Please join your UConn colleagues for two one-hour virtual CETL workshops in April on:
The Environment Corps: an engaged scholarship model that combines classroom instruction, service learning, and Extension (an act in two parts)
Workshop Description:
A partnership at UConn that reaches across college and departmental lines is engaged in a project that seeks to enhance, expand, institutionalize, and study a new model for experiential learning and community engagement. The model, called the Environment Corps (“E-Corps”), combines familiar elements of classroom instruction, service learning, and extension outreach to create a method of engagement that aims to benefit students, faculty, surrounding communities, and the university community itself. This two-part series will review E-Corps structure, operation, results, and early lessons learned.
Part One will focus on course design, faculty development, and pedagogical strategies for engaged student learning; attendees will hear from instructors and students of the three current E-Corps courses. Friday, April 9, 2:00 – 3:00 pm Focus on the Classroom REGISTER HERE
Part Two will focus on building community partnerships and designing appropriate student projects, including several examples; attendees will hear from additional instructors and our municipal “clients.” Both sessions will set aside ample time for discussion. Friday, April 23, 2:00 – 3:00 pm Focus on Community Projects REGISTER HERE
Student teams led by Bruce Hyde and other CLEAR faculty will work with Connecticut towns as part of the UConn Climate Corps.
UConn has received a $2.25 million grant from the National Science Foundation to expand and study a new public engagement program that combines teaching, service learning, and Extension outreach.
The program is called the Environment Corps and focuses on using STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) skills to address important environmental issues like climate adaptation, brownfields remediation, and stormwater management at the municipal level. Environment Corps combines the familiar elements of classroom instruction, service learning and UConn Extension’s work with communities in a unique way that allows students to develop STEM skills and get “real world” experience as preparation for the work force, while communities receive help in responding to environmental mandates that they often lack the resources to address on their own.
“The entire team is excited and gratified that NSF has selected us for funding. This will allow us to expand and better coordinate our efforts, and create something that will hopefully be part of the University’s public engagement portfolio for a long time,” says Extension Educator Chet Arnold, principal investigator of the grant and the Director of UConn’s Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR).
The Environment Corps or “E-Corps” came out of a three-year pilot project originally funded by the UConn Provost’s Office in 2016. That project developed the Climate Corps, an undergraduate instructional effort focused on local, town-level impacts of, and responses to, climate change. Designed to draw students from the Environmental Studies, Environmental Sciences, and Environmental Engineering majors, the Climate Corps debuted in the fall of 2017. The program consists of a class in the fall with a strong focus on local challenges and issues, followed by a “practicum” spring semester during which students are formed into teams and matched with towns work on projects. Partnerships with the towns are built on the long-term relationships that have developed between local officials and Extension educators from CLEAR and the Connecticut Sea Grant program.
Climate Corps was a hit with both students and towns, and in 2018 spun off a second STEM offering, this one focusing on
Climate Corps students tour low impact development on the UConn Storrs campus. Photo: Chet Arnold
brownfields (contaminated sites) redevelopment. The Brownfields Corps, taught by the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, debuted in the fall of 2018. With the NSF funding, there will now be a third “Corps,” the Stormwater Corps, which is under development and will help towns deal with the many requirements of the state’s newly strengthened general stormwater permit.
The NSF-funded project involves expansion and coordination of the three programs, but also has a major focus on studying the impact of the E-Corps approach on students, faculty, participating towns, and the UConn community. Faculty from the Neag School of Education will lead the research. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning will take the lead in working with university administrators and faculty to promote further expansion of the model.
The local, real-world focus of the E-Corps model is getting an enthusiastic response from students. One student wrote: “Climate Corps had a huge influence on me, and for a while I wasn’t super excited about the sorts of jobs I’d be qualified to do…but having this experience opened so many doors for me and exposed me to so many different things I could do. I’m really excited to start my new job because I’ve been able to combine a career with something I find super interesting.” Fall classes are filled to capacity for the Climate and Brownfields Corps.
“With two years of the Climate Corps and a year of the Brownfields Corps under our belts I think we can say that both the students and the communities are benefitting from this program,” says Sea Grant Extension Educator Juliana Barrett, a Climate Corps instructor. “As a Land and Sea Grant University UConn has a critical mission to engage the community, and the E-Corps project gives us a new, exciting model for doing that.”
UConn Extension’s Chet Arnold, Juliana Barrett and Bruce Hyde are part of a team that received funding from the University as part of the Academic Plan Proposal Awards. Other team members include: Mark Boyer (Geography), Maria Chrysochoou (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Sylvain DeGuise (Pathobiology), and John Volin (Natural Resources and the Environment).
This project will create the UConn Climate Corps, an undergraduate program built upon a new 3-credit course and a subsequent 3 -credit practicum during which students will assist Connecticut communities in adapting to climate change. During the internship, student teams will work closely with Extension faculty mentors to directly engage town officials; the students will collect and present information that will be used by towns as they plan for climate resiliency. The Climate Corps will contribute significantly to the Sustainability and Resilience Strategic Area of the Academic Plan, serve as a high profile facet of the University’s public engagement portfolio, and provide a real world service learning experience and work force development for high-achieving students in environmentally related programs, including the Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, and Environmental Engineering programs.
