EnviroNewsNewsletter of Santa Clara University Environmental Studies Institute

Volume XXVI Winter 2008

ESI Welcomes New Director

We are happy to announce that Leslie Gray is our new Executive Director at ESI. Leslie is a geographer with interests in environment and development issues. Her very diverse academic background shows that you can study almost anything if you put your mind to it. She has an undergraduate degree in history and Arabic from Georgetown University, a master’s in agronomy and plant science from U.C. Davis and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Illinois. Leslie has lived and worked extensively in Egypt, Sudan, Burkina Faso and France. She has participated in famine relief in Sudanese refugee camps with CARE International and

has worked with organizations such as U.N.D.P. and Catholic Relief Services. Leslie is just off of a year sabbatical where she traveled to Burkina Faso on a Fulbright grant to conduct research with farmers on issues of cotton, poverty, debt and environmental change. Leslie traveled to Burkina with her husband, Michael Kevane, and her two children, Sukie (4) and Elliot (9). They had many adventures there, including climbing rare rock formations, sailing in rickety canoes looking at hippopotami, visiting a lake of sacred crocodiles (performing rites of worship- ask Leslie what that entailed!) and adopting goats, chickens and desert tortoises as pets. She is working with a team of researchers at the University of Ouagadougou and plans to keep traveling there every summer into the foreseeable future. They have kept their village and town home in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, so stop by and visit sometime. Leslie is very much looking forward to being the executive director of ESI. Some of the things on her radar screen are working to create more opportunities for faculty and students to interact, trying to make the ESI minor more accessible to students in the business school and working with our fabulous faculty and staff to create more research opportunities for students. She would also love to work with students interested in doing research or internships in Africa or other developing areas. Please stop by sometime and say hi to Leslie.

Pizza & Costa Rica Information Session

Tuesday, January 29

6-7:00 p.m. Seniore’s Pizza

(940 Monroe St.)

What’s Inside… ESI Seminar Series............................................... 2 Spring 2008 Courses…........................................ 2 Study Abroad in Costa Rica............................... 3 Undergrad Sci. & Eng. Symposium…………... 4 ESI Faculty in the media……………………………..5 Recycle Trivia & Mania…………………………5 Spring break in Nicaragua................................... 6

Environmental Studies Institute SEMINAR SERIES Winter 2008

January 18 Roger Luckenbach, Ph.D. Herpetologist, Ornithologist, and Naturalist, National Geographic Society and Fresno City College The Natural History of Baja California February 15 Craig Stephens, Associate Professor & Biology Department Chair at SCU The Microbiology of Biofuels February 29 Sadie Ryan, Ph.D. NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer, Department Of Anthropology, Stanford University A Structured Model for Disease Transmission in Primate Populations

Seminars are 12:00 pm1:00 p.m. in Kennedy Commons.

Join us for coffee and cookies at 11:45 a.m. If you have a disability and require reasonable

accommodations please call 408-551-7086 at least 48 hours before the event date.

Visit our website at www.scu.edu/envs

FRIDAYS AT NOON Kennedy Commons

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Also this Spring: ENVS 11: Introduction to Environmental Science ENVS 13: Soil, Water, and Air L&L ENVS 98: Outdoor Leadership Expedition (OLE) ENVS 122: U.S. Environmental Policy ENVS 149: Politics of African Development ENVS 158: Conservation Psychology ENVS 161: Ethics of Environment, Agriculture & Food

New Upcoming Spring 2008 Courses ENVS 79 Environmental Literature of CA This course surveys the diverse literature celebrating the California landscape. A broad range of genres and literatures will be examined, including such authors as Charles Fremont, John Muir, Mary Austin, Robinson Jeffers, Richard Brautigan, Gary Snyder, Gretel Ehrlich, and William Saroyan. Students will engage in a program of ecocritical writing designed to develop advanced writing skills while promoting ecological literacy. Also listed as ENGL 79 Literature, Language, Culture: Environmental Literature of California. Prerequisites: ENGL 1 and 2. (4 units) NCX ENVS 95/195 SLURP: Sustainable Living Undergraduate Research Project This course, jointly sponsored by the Environmental Studies Institute and the CyPhi Residential Learning Community, is designed to promote a culture of sustainability within the residential communities of the modern university. Students will engage in intensive research over the course of the academic year and will compile and present their results during the spring quarter. Enrollment is limited to residents of the SLURP floor in the CyPhi RLC. (4 units) NCX ENVS 131 Environmental Education Environmental Education plays a fundamental role in our attempts to make human systems more sustainable. This course is an introduction to the study and practice of Environmental Education. It surveys philosophies, theories, and methods of Environmental Education with a special emphasis on techniques for engaging K-12 students in outdoor settings to maximize learning of environmental concepts and to improve the students’ understanding of their personal connections to nature. The course will introduce creative ways that we - as current or future teachers, parents, or mentors - can use active study of and interactions with the outdoor environment to engage young people in the study of environmental systems and basic biological, chemical, and physical sciences. A portion of the course will be taught in field-based settings. Students will participate in service learning projects that will give them practical experience planning and leading environmental education lessons. This course is especially valuable for future teachers. Also listed as LBST 131 (5 units) NCX

Additional Speaker Presentations at SCU: Ethics at Noon

Wednesday, January 30 12:001:00 p.m.

Commons at Kennedy Mall Lee S. Friedman, Professor of Public Policy, The Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy, University of

California at Berkeley, and William Sundstrom, SCU Professor of Economics and Associate Provost for Faculty

Development Rights, Responsibility, and Regulatory Choices: How Should California Achieve Its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Goals?

This event is sponsored by the Markkula Center for Applied

Ethics and the Environmental Studies Institute.

Study Abroad in Costa Rica Summer 2008

Field Course in Plant Ecology & Primate Behavior Second Summer Session (July 28-August 29, 2008)

The Costa Rica summer program offers a small cohort of students the opportunity to experience the biodiversity of a Costa Rica tropical rainforest. All students in the Costa Rica study abroad program will enroll in two 5 unit courses: 1) ANTH 197: Field Course: Primate Behavioral Ecology; and, 2) ENVS 134: Plant Ecology in the Tropics. Students have two weeks of field instruction at SCU, followed by two weeks at a La Suerte Biological Field Station in Costa Rica, gaining hands-on experience in community ecology and animal behavior. Typical days will involve fieldwork (e.g. hiking, data collection) and afternoon lectures/ discussions. The final week of the course will take place at SCU and emphasizes data interpretation and presentation. Please contact: International Programs at: http://www.scu.edu/studyabroad/ for more information. There will be a Pizza Night from 6-7p.m., Tues January 29 at: Seniore's Pizza, 940 Monroe St

(& Homestead) where more information on these courses will be provided. ANTH 197: Field Course: Primate Behavioral Ecology (Michelle Bezanson: MBezanson@scu.edu) In this course we emphasize on-site anthropological field research with practical experience in the basic techniques of observation and field data analysis. Lectures emphasize core theoretical concepts in primatological research with examples from field studies of New World primates. Each student conducts independent data collection to produce a completed scientific paper where they are the sole author. They can use these results to present in classes, at a conference or research symposium, or to develop future projects. Great projects can be developed into publications to submit to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, each student learns about themselves and their role in the community. First, they are immersed within a new academic community where they establish lasting relationships with future colleagues. Second, they learn about the importance of the local community and how our role in research is not restricted to the academic community or our study subjects. ENVS 134: Plant Ecology in the Tropics (Sean Watts: SWatts@scu.edu) This course is primarily focused on plant community ecology including: instruction in evolution, systematics, biogeography, plant defense, and pollination/dispersal syndromes… it just happens to incorporate some field work in a tropical rainforest. Because the course has both a Californian (mediterranean-type climate) and Costa Rican (pre-montane rainforest) component, labs will compare the community ecology and diversity of similar landscapes in each region. Extensive training in field methods will prepare students for these labs and the development of each student’s proposal for final projects. After this course students should have a basic ability to distinguish members of major plant families, an understanding of the biogeographic and ecological forces that influence plant communities and practical experience in plant field ecological methods and the development of testable hypotheses.

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ENVS 98: Outdoor Leadership Expedition Advanced Course – Spring Quarter 2008

Application available: January 18 (Deadline: March 7, 2008)

This course uses instruction in wilderness safety, outdoor technical skills and low-impact camping to develop leadership skills and an appreciation of the natural world. Students are graded P/NP only. An online application is required prior to instructor approval. The course has been developed in collaboration with the Center for Student Leadership and the Environmental Studies Institute.

Class meets on Tuesdays from 6-7:30 p.m. in O’Connor 110. FIRST CLASS IS MANDATORY (Tuesday, April 1) as we will provide registration numbers at this session. THE EXPEDITION IS ALSO MANDATORY: May 16-18 at Sequoia or Yosemite National Park, CA. In order to make the most of the weekend we will depart from campus on Friday at 10:30 a.m., returning on Sunday by 9 p.m. Transportation for the trip will be arranged by the instructors.

NOTE: The spring course is more advanced than the fall quarter. You should be prepared to hike 8-9 miles per day at moderate elevation (7500’) – given elevation gain, altitude & 30+ lb packs, hike-time is likely to be 7-8 hrs. The entire trip should be 15+ miles total (the second day factors in return drive time). If you are in reasonably good shape, you should be fine, even if you’ve never hiked this far in a day, but it is important that you are prepared for this level of exertion.

Undergraduate Science & Engineering Symposium March 7, 2008, Williman Room, Benson Center

Goals & General Format of the Symposium Without graduate students to bridge the gap between students and faculty, we believe it is especially important to actively expose students to research opportunities here at SCU. The primary goal of this symposium and workshop is to expose newly declared majors to the research process and to improve recruitment and retention in the sciences. It will also allow student researchers to present their work (or that of their labs) in a professional format. The content of the presentations could range from results of independent student research to reports on progress made in a larger lab project. The symposium is set for the afternoon/evening of March 7, 2008. The symposium will begin with a presentation on research: Why do research? How do you get involved in research? This will be followed by a couple sessions divided according to similar disciplines. The basic schedule for each of these sessions will be as follows: • 10 – 12 minute talks by students (3 – 5 talks per session) • An informal panel of the student researchers at the end of each session to answer questions on the talks • Followed by a general discussion of careers, research and the culture of science in that discipline.

We will have short breaks between sessions to allow students to interact with one another and finish the symposium with a reception & awards ceremony on Friday evening. FACULTY: If you are teaching a course this quarter with newly declared majors, please consider encouraging (or even incentivizing) students to attend. Finally, we will still accept student abstracts (until Feb 1) and faculty interested in recruiting students for research might also consider making a presentation to advertise their proposed study (please email Sean: SWatts@scu.edu). Please visit the “Undergraduate Science and Engineering Symposium” link on the ESI website: http://www.scu.edu/cas/environmentalstudies/ for more information.

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ESI lecturer speaks out on climate change ESI’s, Sean Watts appeared on the TV Show “Breathe California” to discuss climate change. The program is

available to 300,000 Comcast subscribers on their San Jose and Palo Alto systems. The program, hosted by ESI Environmental Law Lecturer, Terry Trumbull, runs on Channel 15 in San Jose every Thursday Night at 9:30 p.m., as well as on Channel 27 in Palo Alto. Sean discussed the interconnected problems of global warming, energy use, and air pollution. Discussion focused on the need to get involved through our individual actions, civic engagement, and political participation in the campaign to reduce our impact on the environment.

Conservation for the People

Some of us value nature and the incredible diversity of life for their own sake. But let’s face it – many people question why we should be concerned with the fate of other species when human needs, desires, or economic activities conflict with the requirements of other species. Indeed, the very real tragedies of human poverty, hunger, and disease can make conservation of nature seem like the last thing we need to worry about. But nature is not disconnected from very basic human needs for food and shelter. Essential goods and services, ranging from food and fiber to oxygen and flood control are delivered to us by natural ecosystems. Until recently these ecosystem services went largely ignored, perhaps because they were rarely impaired and therefore could be taken for granted. Now however, there is a growing recognition that the fate of humans is inexorably tied to the fate of ecosystems and the species that compose them.

It is also clear that human activities are interfering with the delivery of ecosystem services on an unprecedented scale, and that if trends continue we may so alter the earth’s ecology that human well-being will be at risk. Governments and conservation organizations have traditionally responded to these threats by purchasing land and establishing nature reserves that are “off limits” to people. This strategy has been successful in some places, but in many others there has been significant backlash from people whose homes and livelihoods have been compromised by the establishment of parks.

In an October 2007 Scientific American article entitled "Conservation for the People," ESI scientists Peter Kareiva and Michelle Marvier argue that pitting nature and biodiversity against people makes little sense. Instead, if conservation is to succeed, human health and well-being must be central to modern conservation efforts. Kareiva and Marvier argue that new strategies are needed - strategies that recognize and promote the link between the well-being of nature and the well-being of people.

To learn more, see the full article in Scientific American, volume 297, pages 50-57.

Peter Kareiva, Sean Watts & Michelle Marvier

RecycleTrivia Week Feb. 4 - Feb. 8 The RecycleTrivia Raffle is a quarterly contest that rewards SCU residents for recycling and properly disposing of waste on campus. To enter the raffle, campus residents must fill out the raffle ticket from their recycling magnet with the correct answer to the posted trivia question. The answers can be found in the new signs posted in the recycling and waste areas around campus. If you live on campus but did not receive a magnet, contact recycling@scu.edu For more information visit: http://www.scu.edu/sustainability/recycletrivia/

RecycleMania

On January 27, SCU will join over 300 colleges and universities across the U.S. in a competition to see which institution can recycle the most and produce the least amount of trash. RecycleMania lasts January 27 through April 5. SCU students, faculty, staff, and campus visitors are all in the game! RecycleMania events will include trash audits, dorm storms, RLC competitions, adopt-a-game events, prizes for people who get caught green handed, and more! For more information, visit Sustainability at SCU: http://www.scu.edu/sustainability.

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Water for Life: Journey to Nicaragua

Learn about sustainability and water

development during spring break, March 23-29, 2008

Through meetings with local organizations and visits to rural communities, we’ll learn about: • Helping communities obtain clean drinking water systems and latrines • Employing locally-appropriate engineering designs • Enhancing sustainable watershed management through reforestation and soil conservation • Promoting health and hygiene education and infant health monitoring in communities • Training water technicians to develop local expertise for sustaining systems

We’ll see in action the vision for sustainable water development of Agua para la Vida, a non-profit with 20 years of experience in sustainable water development that has benefited over 15,000 people in rural Nicaragua. For information and an application for this trip, please contact: Valerie Sarma, SCU Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education, VSarma@scu.edu

Environmental Studies Institute Santa Clara University 500 El Camino Real

Santa Clara, CA 95053

Phone: (408) 551-7086Fax: (408) 554-2312

ESI Email: esi@scu.edu Website: www.scu.edu/envs

EnviroNews is prepared by Leah Nakasaki. Comments or Suggestions? Send to lnakasaki@scu.edu.

www.scu.edu/envs

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