Focus:
The Environmental Studies Program is a component of Western's Center for Environmental Studies (CES) which focuses on the interactions of humans and the natural environment. Specifically, the Program studies the structure and functioning of natural systems and the ways that human social, political, and economic activity affects those systems. The center focuses on four central environmental education opportunities unique to the Gunnison Valley:
Sense of Place
Gunnison County's intimate community empowers students to apply academic learning to regional environmental issues.
Surrounded by 80% public lands and multiple public lands agencies, a student body that represents 20% of the county's
population, a campus rapidly "greening" from student initiatives, and a wealth of environmental nonprofits, Western
students have an exceptional opportunity to participate in internships and service projects that enhance their learning
and prepare them for environmental careers.
Sense of Community
Gunnison's mountain community attracts a complicated combination of economic activities. Blending a college town, a burgeoning
resort industry, traditional ranching, and returning extractive industries, Gunnison affords Western the opportunity to convene
diverse stakeholders and compels Western students to negotiate diverging views of the role of the Rocky Mountain region in imagining
a sustainable society-truly a "Center" for interdisciplinary collaboration and campus-community problem-solving. The flagship of
this effort has been our Headwaters Conference, now in its 20th year.
Water
Since Western sits on the western slope of the Continental Divide, the waters that cross Western's campus are the very waters
that provide for the diverse life and expanding societies of the transnational West. With a Water curriculum in the ENVS major
and a prestigious annual Colorado Water Workshop in its 4th decade, Western students learn at the source of western water issues.
As climate change affects stream flows and as expanding populations increase consumption worldwide, the CES is committed to analyzing
the global implications of regional water issues.
Sustainable Solutions
Just as the CES connects disciplines, classroom lessons with field-based learning, and campus
with community, so the CES seeks to connect local and global environmental issues to enrich student learning and community outreach. The
CES understands that a "sense of place" requires an understanding of the factors that define a region as intrinsically unique and an
understanding of the distant regions impacted by and necessary for cultivating place in a global context. This obligation drives the Center's
commitment to global applications of regional environmental learning and service, from student participation in the President's Climate
Commitment to the Making the Connection Program's efforts to enact entrepreneurial business solutions to poverty and deforestation in the
Kakamega Rainforest of Kenya.
Goals Include:
- Developing students' capacities for interdisciplinary critical thinking, problem solving, and communication.
- Applying the diverse research methods of the social sciences and natural sciences to understand and analyze local, national, and international environmental issues.
- Fostering an understanding of the literature of the environment and ethical questions in environmental decision making.
- Enhancing career and graduate study opportunities in environmentally related disciplines.
Inside the classroom our students:
- Coordinate service projects on public lands.
- Complete original research in environmental monitoring and design solar panels.
- Complete senior capstone projects which have ranged from a wilderness plan for the Black Canyon National Park, to a campus organic garden, to environmental education in local schools, to imagining an environmentally responsible academic building.
Outside the classroom, our students have:
- Led efforts towards Western's signing of the Environmental Charter.
- Worked with Student Government Association to pass a Sustainability Fund to encourage campus environmental projects.
- Traveled to Kenya to install solar panels.
- Encouraged President Jay Helman to sign the President's Climate Commitment.