Interdisciplinary Seminar
Upper Years (rising 10th, 11th, and 12th grade)
August 6 - August 17*
*One week option available for August 6-10
an immersion into the challenges of environmental stewardship and science

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Students map out and explore three interdisciplinary aspects of environmental stewardship: Civilization and Sustainability, Ethics and Arguments, Environmental Science and Policy. They will learn to identify problems in environmental systems in order to approach them creatively and communicate potential solutions across political and social divides.


Works: Civilization and Sustainability
Students grapple with questions about their relationship to the environment: How can living comfortably also mean living sustainably? What strains do “civilized” life put on the environment and how can we ease them? Students will deepen their understanding of how daily living contributes to global environmental systems.

Example Activities:
  • Design a process-based or technology solution for water waste in everyday routines
  • Visit sustainable farm to learn about regenerative habitats and adaptable structures, and then create assessment rubric for measuring structures and habitats locally
  • Driving Change: students plan early steps in grassroots organizing to raise awareness or bring about changes in how institutions and individuals interact with the environment

Words: Ethics and Arguments
Students explore techniques of persuasion, debate, and communication. How can we persuade others to change how they see and interact with the environment? In “Ethics and Arguments” students will explore ethics of environmentalism, hone persuasive techniques for moving others to altering their behaviors, develop narrative as a tool for influencing how we view the world, and examine the sociological barriers to consensus on matters of risk and crisis. Students will be introduced to the essentials of moral philosophy, enact debates, and experiment with strategies for communication, all while responding to challenges encountered throughout the program.

Example Activities:
  • Media Wars: How does the media rely on metaphors when covering climate change? Rewrite headlines for different interest groups, audiences, and goals
  • Intro to Cognitive Framing: what can psychology tell us about how to find common ground across divides?
  • Environmental Justice: debate which environmental differences and disparities across regions and groups are unjust
  • Experiment with multimedia narrative techniques to deepen our awareness of how ecological crises and perils impact daily lives across the country and around the world

Wisdom: Environmental Science and Policy
In this concentration, students view environmental science and policy through the lens of systems theory. They are exposed to methodologies and scientific principles that will equip them with the ability to analyze problems and engineer inventive solutions to environmental crises. Considering the physical, biological, and chemical processes that are at the base of changing environmental systems, students assess and interpret local, national, and global policies and formulate solutions of their own.

Example Activities:
  • Coral crisis: students look into the 200 gallon ocean tank to study coral growth and then turn to the Science on a Sphere to learn about the crisis in coral around the world’s oceans
  • Resilience thinking: employ computer models to study environmental systems pushed to the brink, and to understand what makes some systems more resilient than others
  • Real-Time River Table Simulations: faced with a design imperative, students simulate solutions to estimate impact on human and environmental factors

Upper Years Environmental Seminar with Research Program
The Interdisciplinary Seminar also offers an additional research option for rising Junior and Seniors participating in the full two-week program. In this program, students branch off in the afternoons of the second week. Working in small groups under the supervision of an expert instructor, students investigate, research, and design a solution to an environmental challenge. If you are interested in this program, please register for the Interdisciplinary Seminar and contact summerinstitute@mbs.net for further information.