Sustainable Rivers Project
The Sustainability Program and Department of Earth Sciences are working to increase earth literacy across the liberal arts curriculum. Our approach is to employ place-based learning focused on the Missouri River, a vital part of South Dakota's people, history, economy, geography, and environment. Many people have a connection to the river, and by emphasizing earth science and sustainability topics related to the river in the liberal arts curriculum, our goals are to 1) increase science literacy among undergraduate students, 2) foster interest in earth science and sustainability majors on campus, and 3) increase faculty knowledge and awareness of earth science and sustainability through networking.
We envision that by integrating earth science and sustainability themes into non-science courses, students will become aware of the importance of earth science and sustainability in their daily lives. We will work closely with the College of Arts and Sciences Liberal Arts Task Force, who value the importance of interdisciplinary teaching in making rich connections between the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The implementation of the Sustainable Rivers program on campus will provide faculty an opportunity to network and build new interdisciplinary research collaborations. In doing so, the enthusiasm and success of this program will likely foster additional participation of faculty. We hope that participating faculty will continue to utilize relevant materials from the InTeGrate project in their courses.
This project is one of the implementation program of the InTeGrate project. More information about Sustainable Rivers can be found on the InTeGrate website.
