LSP Environmental Studies Community Event Reports

The event that I attended was the Environmental Studies open house. The open house was hosted by the environmental studies program and was lead by Christopher Schlottmann, the event coordinator for the program. This open house took place on October 8 at five O’clock inside 295 Mercer Street. The event had an academic tone to it. Most of the faculty and students who attended the event were focused on talking about the future of students in environmental studies and what their careers may be after graduating from the program.

The open house began with every person who attended introducing themselves to the group. There was an even assortment of professors, environmental students, prospective transfer students, and just people interested in environmental studies in general. Something interesting that I noticed about the faculty that attended the event was that a good number of them were teachers in other programs that used their expertise to teach an environmental class. For example, Shafer Smith, a math teacher who taught calculus 1 last year, taught a class that used math to understand climate. The professors were more than happy to answer any questions that students had for them; even one of the teachers who helped run the program, Professor Dale Jamieson, sat down and answered all the questions Dan, Jeff and I had for him even though we were only there on assignment for a class.

The experience I got from going to the open house was new and familiar at the same time. It was familiar because I have been to many open houses for all sorts of programs and events; however, I had never been to one where I discussed the topic of environmental science. I found the information I obtained from attending this event to be, not only interesting, but extremely relevant and important to our class and to our current society. While sitting down with Professor Jamieson, Dan, Jeff, and I asked him two major questions that we were interested in.

With the presidential election just around the corner, the first question we asked was, “in [his] opinion which of the two major presidential candidates would be a better selection from an environmental standpoint.” According to the professor, he said both nominees would probably be environmentally sound presidents, however, Jamieson claimed that voting for Senator Obama would be a much safer choice. He explained that Barack Obama would be a better president from an environmental standpoint, not because he had better policies on environmental issues, but because John McCain and Sarah Palin seem to be losing focus of these issues. Professor Jamieson said that recently McCain seems to be less supportive of many environmental issues he once stood for and Palin has recently questioned her belief that global warming is a serious issue, or if it even exists at all. I found this discussion extremely enlightening; with all the environmental problems that we have been discussing in class, like our planet’s issue with global warming, I will have to consider many more factors when deciding on which candidate to vote for. However, Professor Jamieson warned us that we should not put too much weight on either nominee’s environmental plans because there is no guarantee either one will follow through with what they say. He explained that the current president, George W. Bush, was a strong proponent for the Clean Air Act during his campaign, however, once he got into office he quickly shied away from it.

The other question we decided to ask Dale Jamieson was, “of all the different environmental problems facing our world today, such as global warming, climate change, over population, over production of agriculture, etc. what is the one issue [he] sees as the biggest problem facing the world today?” He stated that the issue he feared most was climate change because it was somewhat of an umbrella for all the issues facing our environment currently and in the future. Professor Jamieson said that many of the issues we have talked about in class are made worse by climate change. For example, he told us that although we are having agricultural problems now, this issue will be much worse when climate change around agricultural land causes that land not to be farmable; farmers will have to somehow move their farms to more suitable farmland, something that seems practically impossible to do at the moment. He went on to say the fundamental problem behind climate change is how people treat their environment. We all have to pitch in and do our part in order to sustain the world we live in. I found this incredibly interesting because it made me realize that everything I do has an affect on our world and that maybe I should start becoming more involved with helping take care of our environment.

The event I attended, although it may have seemed useless to the community and environment, actually had somewhat of an indirect impact on them. It was able to answer students’ questions about the program and the field of study in general, making some of them even more enthusiastic about the subject. These enthusiastic students may now have the drive to help solve or at least lessen some of the many problems facing the earth today. Overall, I feel the event was successful in explaining the environmental program and creating a community within its members. The only suggestion I would give to make the event even better would be to give more of an explanation about some of the courses each teacher taught; I was only able to find out about what kind of classes were offered through the program by going up to different teachers and asking them what they taught and what it was about.

Although I did not think I would enjoy attending an environmental open house, I am actually glad I went to it. Especially after talking to professor Jamieson, I realized just how important peoples’ effect on the environment truly is. This event has even intrigued me to possible take another environmental class in the future.