Assignments general comments

ENV 305, Topics: Advocating Environmental Reform ( S ) requirement
Advocating Environmental Reform is a course designed to expose students to the advocacy process that is at the core of the American social and political system for them to practice articulating, explaining and criticizing the status quo. This is done so they understand the ways and means as well as the necessity for transforming existing power relationships at the state and national levels to protect people, property and wildlife. Trips to Washington D.C. and Tallahassee to meet legislative staff and present policy alternatives are optional, but meetings with local elected representives will take place during the term.

ENV 347, Islands in the Stream: ( V ) or values requirement
“ No man is an island entire unto himself,” so suggested John Donne and this course makes that dilemma visible in more ways than one. This field study, studio and analytical discussion class examines the literature, lore and natural history of the United States tropic isles, including reefs, mangroves, fisheries, and wildlife. The nation’s varied coastal barrier islands form the focus of this class on natural history, literature, law and ecological design that asks students to consider, express and redraft designs for protecting these islands, their resident populations and their attendant scenic qualities and natural resources.

In order that “This course will improve the student's ability to articulate and evaluate the ethical principles involved in important decisions, in their own personal lives or in society (either contemporary or historical)” the participants are asked to examine, analyze and explain the wildlife and vegetation of a natural barrier island and then apply principles of ecological design to the development of a coastal island.

For the 2006 school year a significant Community engagement option exists in this class. Those participants who select to, may if they have the ability to travel, assist the professor and two volunteer engineers in a Dune restoration test site on an Atlantic Coastal barrier island of the Indian River Lagoon. The City of Satellite Beach is the location of the project to restabilize, badly eroded dunes.

MLS-605, Milestones of Modern Science

Any milestone is a marker alerting the traveler of how far they have traversed a highway. If science were a pathway from the ignorance of our past to the errors of the present day, then the milestones would indicate the seminal concepts propelling current research and discovery into mind, matter, energy, time, space and life, itself.

This course asks several questions to reveal how extremely our worldviews change over time. As human understanding of natural existence has changed from the pre-Socratic ideas embedded in Aristotle to the present, serious questions arise about the essence and origins of universal, physical conditions.

• How do the ideas of science change and influence the cultures producing these new discoveries?

• How has our knowledge of the human place in the natural world changed from ancient times until the present?

• Do these changes reveal a hidden reality of the cosmos and the earth in which we coexist with the living and the dead?

• How has the redefinition of life and the human relation to the living (bios) world (welt) altered the understanding [logos or word] of our responsibility for the planet on which we all depend?

• Has the human quest for certainty, reliability, and predictability encountered new barriers?

These questions reveal some of the problems this course asks you to reflect upon.

For further details, see the pdf file version of the study guide on the Rollins Graduate School page for the Master of Liberal Studies Web Site

Writing | Interviews | Free Writing

All assignments are graded according to these criteria: CORE

Written and oral presentations are due on the dates listed in the syllabus for the class you are enrolled.

Late work is penalized for missing the deadlines posted in the syllabus.

Students are expected to use this web site when doing research of all assignments.

Every assignment is to be based on material assigned to be read in the class syllabus.

Grades