Wesleyan University
AC-8: Campus as a Living Laboratory

The Artist in the Community: Civic Engagement and Collaborative Dancemaking (ENVS/DANC/THEA 376, last offered Fall 2021): Through this practical course, students grew their understanding of community-based performance and collaborative art-making. Students applied their learning by playing integral roles in the production of the Forklift Danceworks performance project with Physical Plant and other campus staff in October. Students will learn through job shadowing and interviewing campus employees, developing and rehearsing choreographic scenarios, and supporting performing employees as part of the production team. Through direct practice, students in the course will explore how collaborative performance can address local issues, spark community dialogue, and encourage civic participation--whether on a college campus, in a neighborhood, or across a city.

This course has increased respect for and collaboration between students and Facilities staff members and has led to the creation of student group WesBridges, which works with Physical Plant, contractors that work regularly on campus (including custodians and Bon Appetit dining services), and other workers on campus to support a fuller campus community that includes both workers and students. We host appreciation events and work to understand the effort and energy that goes into maintaining Wesleyan's campus and making it the place that we as students call home. We will organize spaces to connect and shadow campus workers.

Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship (CSPL 262), last offered Spring 2022) is an intro-level crash course in social entrepreneurship that starts by defining social entrepreneurship, then explores the tactics and tendencies of successful social entrepreneurs and partially incubates a real social enterprise.

Research Methods in Ecological-Community Psychology (PSYC 209, last offered Fall 2019): The focus of this course is to introduce students to the historical and conceptual foundations of ecological and community psychology. Special emphasis is placed on research ethics and framing research questions that address social problems. Students learn about study design and mixed-method approaches that provide a foundation to engage in research and practice.

Introduction to Collaborative Documentary Filmmaking (FILM 104, last offered Fall 2021): In this immersive, time-intensive, hands-on introduction to the documentary film process, students create compelling stories where real people are the protagonists and narratives are informed by real life; for 2021 the theme was sustainability and environmental justice. One of the videos created was Beauty in the Balance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9qKa_Bqc4g), which raised the visibility of The Rockfall Foundation's work.

Environmental Geochemistry & Lab (E&ES 251/ENVS 281, last offered Fall 2021), provides students with hands-on experience, emphasizing field collection, chemical analysis, and data analysis of environmental water, air, and rock samples. The class works with a community organization to solve an environmental problem and concludes with a public presentation of the work. Projects have examined landfills, damned rivers, and polluted lakes and have provided community organizations with information for decision-making.

Soils & Lab (E&ES 305/307, last offered Fall 2021) Each time the course is taught, the students partner with a local entity to analyze soils. The class has partnered with two New Haven elementary schools where students developed and delivered soils-based classroom lessons and analyzed soil from the school gardens for health and fertility which informed planting decisions.

Science Materials For a Malagasy Classroom (BIOL 161/ENVS/IDEA 261, last offered Spring 2022): Students design and produce a variety of educational science materials to be used in a fifth grade classroom in Madagascar. These items have included educational science games, posters, and a comic book with conservation themes for children. Prototypes of the materials are reviewed and rated by fifth graders in a Middletown elementary school for feedback and then shared with Malagasy elementary school students.

Prof. Dana Royer carries out paleoclimate research. He recently has studied the paleoclimatic history of rock formations along the Connecticut River (where Wesleyan is located) 200 million years ago when Pangaea broke up and brought lava and greenhouse gases to the earth's surface, causing a climatic warming and a mass extinction.

Professors Royer (biology), Poulos (environmental studies), Sher (physics), and others regularly bring classes to Wesleyan's central power plant (natural gas facility) and large solar PV installation to learn from Facilities employees where Wesleyan's energy comes from and how it is produced.

GIS Service-Learning Laboratory (E&ES 281/E&ES 581, Fall 2020): This course supplements E&ES280 by providing students the opportunity to apply GIS concepts and skills to solve local problems in environmental sciences. Small groups of students will work closely with community groups to design a GIS, collect and analyze data, and draft a professional-quality report to the community. One Fall 2020 project analyzed Middletown's cemeteries for solar potential.

In spring 2021, Xavier Lopez completed a GIS project to analyzed Wesleyan's forested land and land with potential for reforestation for carbon sequestration potential.

In Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, the E&ES senior seminar class analyzed a parcel of undeveloped Wesleyan land for its potential as a research forest and carbon sequestration. They had three student group projects, and each group wrote a final paper. One group summarized the eight permanent vegetation plots, including estimates of above and below ground carbon. A second group synthesized remote sensing data to estimate how tree height in the forest has changed over time. And the final group looked at groundwater levels in the monitoring wells. The annual emissions from campus travel is about equal to the total amount of carbon in the forest. So, if we wanted to offset all campus travel with forest growth, we would need the equivalent of the total amount of carbon currently in the forest, every year.

The Artist in the Community: Civic Engagement and Collaborative Dancemaking (ENVS/DANC/THEA 376, last offered Fall 2021): Through this practical course, students grew their understanding of community-based performance and collaborative art-making. Students applied their learning by playing integral roles in the production of the Forklift Danceworks performance project with Physical Plant and other campus staff in October. Students will learn through job shadowing and interviewing campus employees, developing and rehearsing choreographic scenarios, and supporting performing employees as part of the production team. Through direct practice, students in the course will explore how collaborative performance can address local issues, spark community dialogue, and encourage civic participation--whether on a college campus, in a neighborhood, or across a city.

This course has increased respect for and collaboration between students and Facilities staff members and has led to the creation of student group WesBridges, which works with Physical Plant, contractors that work regularly on campus (including custodians and Bon Appetit dining services), and other workers on campus to support a fuller campus community that includes both workers and students. We host appreciation events and work to understand the effort and energy that goes into maintaining Wesleyan's campus and making it the place that we as students call home. We will organize spaces to connect and shadow campus workers.

GIS Service-Learning Laboratory (E&ES 281/E&ES 581, Fall 2020): This course supplements E&ES280 by providing students the opportunity to apply GIS concepts and skills to solve local problems in environmental sciences. Small groups of students will work closely with community groups to design a GIS, collect and analyze data, and draft a professional-quality report to the community. One Fall 2020 project analyzed Middletown's cemeteries for solar potential.

Energy Sustainability: An examination of US, New England and Connecticut Energy (E&ES/ENVS 253, Spring 2021): This course will survey the state of energy generation and use in Connecticut, New England, and the U.S. It will include fundamental characteristics of fossil, nuclear, and renewable energy, plus their impact on the local and national energy grid. It will examine how utilities maintain power, including the variable nature of many renewable sources. The course will also examine fuel reliability and impact on local and global air pollution. The course will examine pathways forward for the local and national energy grid. One to two site visits may be incorporated as part of the class, with potential sites including: ISO New England (Holyoke, Mass.), Trash-to-Energy (Hartford, Conn.), combined cycle plant, Kleen Energy plant (Middletown, Conn.), and Combined Heat & Power (UConn Cogen).

Multiple student forums have used the campus as a learning laboratory, including those studying Wesleyan's food purchases, food justice, and Long Lane Farm (campus farm).

Wesleyan's soils class has analyzed the soil at Long Lane Farm. Multiple students have analyzed and mapped different aspects of Wesleyan's tree cover.

In Fall 2020 and Spring 2021, the E&ES senior seminar class analyzed a parcel of undeveloped Wesleyan land for its potential as a research forest. They had three student group projects, and each group wrote a final paper. One group summarized the eight permanent vegetation plots, including estimates of above and below ground carbon. A second group synthesized remote sensing data to estimate how tree height in the forest has changed over time. And the final group looked at groundwater levels in the monitoring wells.

Through the student forum Inspiring Sustainable Behaviors and Systemic Changes (ENVS 420, offered each spring), one student in Spring 2021 worked with Middletown Area Transit to promote the new WesPass program to offer free bus transit to students; this project was continued through a paid position in 2021-22. A second student conducted research and developed an RFP for the City of Middletown to bring a bikeshare program to Middletown; Bird bikes and scooters arrived in Middletown in September 2022 as a result of this research and RFP.

Through a GIS class, students have mapped composting locations on campus and examined the composting process.

Profs. Ku researches many dimensions of water health. Much of this research includes student participation. This includes local bodies of water such as the Connecticut River, Long Island Sound, and various Connecticut lakes. Prof. Ku’s Environmental Geochemistry class typically includes community-based research projects that are water themed.

Prof. Chernoff's Aquatic Conservation course has included analysis of Middletown waters, which serve the campus's drinking water.

Renewable Energy and Negative Emission Technologies (ENVS 344, Fall 2020): Two students within this class worked with the Sustainability Office to develop a website and outreach materials for the forthcoming sustainability strategic plan.

Black Middletown Lives: The Future of Middletown's African American Past (AFAM 307, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Fall 2021): In this service learning course, students will do hands-on history by uncovering, preserving, and sharing Middletown's rich African American past. We will focus on the history of the Beman Triangle. This African American neighborhood, now part of Wesleyan's campus, served as a regional and national antislavery and Underground Railroad center and home to one of the nation's first handful of independent Black churches. Students will partner with local archives, libraries, and museums to help preserve and share this neighborhood's remarkable history. Our projects will include building a website and an exhibit to share this history with the Wesleyan and Middletown communities.

Living in a Polluted World (ENVS/E&ES 361, Fall 2020): The class consists of lectures, one problem set, one Hg-in-hair class study, and a class project on lead in drinking water in the Middletown area. This is also a service-learning course, providing environmental outreach to the larger Middletown community on local pollution.

The Health of Communities (SOC/SISP 315, Fall 2020): Our focus will be on understanding the role of social factors (e.g., income, work environment, social cohesion, food, transportation systems) in determining the health risks of individuals; considering the efficacy, appropriateness, and ethical ramifications of various public health interventions; and learning about the contemporary community health center model of care in response to the needs of vulnerable populations. We explore the concept and history of social medicine, the importance of vocabulary and the complexity of any categorization of persons in discussions of health and illness, ethical issues related to the generation and utilization of community-based research, the role of place and the importance of administrative and cultural boundaries in the variability of health risk, and the idea of just health care. Enrolled students serve as research assistants to preceptors at the Community Health Center (CHC) of Middletown.

Access to Civil Justice (GOVT 379, Spring 2021): In this course, students will explore contemporary issues related to the public's ability to access civil legal advice, legal representation, and fair outcomes within our civil justice system. Students will be exposed to scholarship that highlights the difficulties the public faces when they have justice problems, including 1) exclusion from legal processes; 2) lack of resources; 3) lack of awareness of rights; 4) difficulty recognizing the nature of their problem; and 5) lack of confidence in the justice system. The course will culminate with student-designed research projects investigating and proposing solutions to an access to justice question relevant to a collaborating local, state, or national civil justice organization's work.

Multiple student forums have addressed issues of justice and diversity:
Farm Forum (offered each semester)
System Mapping for Social & Environmental Impact (Spring 2021, Spring 2022)
More information on student forums is at https://www.wesleyan.edu/registrar/course_information/WesMapsStudentForums.html.

Aquatic Conservation examines health impacts of water quality and conservation. A soils class has studied soil samples for contaminants that can be harmful to human health.