Dickinson College
ER-T2-8: Themed Semester or Year

For the third consecutive year, Dickinson College will have a sustainability themed Residential Learning Community for first year students. Seventy-five students, fifteen in each of six First-Year Seminars that will explore questions about food and food systems from a variety of perspectives, will live together in a residence hall as members of the Food Odyssey Residential Learning Community. Members of the learning community will participate in activities that extend learning beyond the classroom and into the residence hall and community. Activities include field trips, service learning projects, dinner and film discussions with faculty members, attendance of public lectures on food and sustainability (invited speakers include Eric Schlosser, Michael Abelman, Marion Nestle, and Anna Lappe), and small group interactions with the guest speakers. Members of the sustainability learning communities of past years have organized themselves to take action to reduce the ecological footprint of their residence hall by setting up clothes-drying racks in their dorm, establishing a composting program for their building, planting a garden and other measures. The Learning Community will be assigned an upper-level student coordinator who will live in the residence hall and work with the students and faculty to plan and coordinator activities.