Course Directors: Kurt Peters , Dwaine Plaza & Paul Barkley

Office: Ethnic Studies Department 225 Strand Agricultural Hall

Office: Sociology Dept. 302 Fairbanks Hall

Office Phone numbers: 737- 0709 737-5369

Course Web Page Address: http://osu.orst.edu/instruct/soc204/plazad/environ/index.htm

Office Hours: Anytime throughout the scheduled five days of the course. After the course is completed by appointment only.

Email addresses: Kpeters@orst.edu dplaza@orst.edu

Class Meetings
On Thursday, March 18 4:00- 5:00 pm, meet in Strand Agricultural Hall, Room 226.You are required to attend a short pre-course information meeting. At this meeting the syllabus will be distributed, pre-departure planning will be finalized and a short ice breaking session will take place.

On Sunday March 21 we will meet in Strand Agricultural Hall Room 226 at 8:15 am. We will leave OSU and travel together by van to Newport Oregon. Students will spend one day living in Newport Oregon. Students will participate in all aspects of the course which also includes some domestic chores (cooking, cleaning and maintaining their communal living quarters).

** This class requires LONG hours of processing after we return from stakeholder meetings in the afternoons. The class also requires early morning starts. Please note that we can often be in class until 9:00 p.m. 13 hour days are not uncommon in this intense course. You therefore need to bring a positive up-beat attitude to this course. Turbulence is also very much part of the group dynamic process and when orchestrating a course of this nature. Please be mentally prepared for this.

During the course there may be some unforeseen circumstances which arise that alter the schedule below. In this case it will be YOUR responsibility to find out what those adjustments might be.

Course Goals:
To bring stakeholders from diverse backgrounds together to learn about cross cultural issues in environmental justice that people have faced in Oregon both historically and contemporarily. Through listening, analysis and collaboration with different community stakeholders including: farmers, environmental activists, state legislators, urban planners, economists, health care providers, extension services, urban developers, media reporters, fishing industry representatives, and community residents, course participants will begin to develop a better understanding of the complex web of issues that exist in trying to achieve environmental justice in the State of Oregon today. The course embodies a non-traditional approach to learning that blurs the boundaries between teacher/ student/ community/ researchers. Stakeholders with vested interests in environmental justice will be invited to tell their perspective to the students who will then have the opportunity to reflect upon this information in a collective setting. Group processing of the information obtained through intense listening experiences will contribute to the students understanding of issues presented from different social positions and perspectives. By the end of the week students will better understand the complex issues in trying to achieve a sense of environmental justice in Oregon.

Required Course Materials:
Satterfield, Terre, (2003) Anatomy of a Conflict: Identity, Knowledge, and Emotion in Old-Growth Forests. British Columbia: University of British Columbia Press.

Course Reading Kit

One notebook (i.e. binder/ spiral) to be used as a reflection journal

1 floppy disk 3.5 IBM format

Please have an active ONID account password so you can access the computer room facilities in Education Hall room 126 on March 25^th. Accounts are automatically created for you, but if you have not done so already, you will need to activate your account. Instructions on how to do this are available at student computer labs.

Summary of the Final Grade Calculation
Intellectual Engagement/Participation 30 percent
Group Presentation 20 percent
Personal Journal/ Writing To Learn 20 percent
Book Critique 15 percent
Web Page Production 15 percent

Throughout the week we may be using a video camera and digital camera to record the discussions and experiences that we engage in. Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated.

Throughout the week we may have member(s) of the local or state press accompany us to observe the pedagogical method of learning. Your cooperation in helping them understand the leaning that is taking place in the course is greatly appreciated.

Graduate students enrolled in the course are required to make their personal journal, book review, web page and participation in the course more extensive than undergraduate students. We will have a separate discussion with the Graduate students to discuss course requirements.

Services For Students with Disabilities
Students with documented disabilities who may need accommodations, who have any emergency medical information the instructors should know of, or who need special arrangements in the event of an evacuation, should make an appointment immediately.

The Writing Center
The Writing Center provides students with a FREE consulting service for their writing assignments. The Center is located at 123 Waldo Hall. The service operates from Monday to Thursday 9-7 pm, and Friday 9-4 pm. You can make an appointment to discuss your writing with a peer writing assistant (737-5640). Another option available through the Center is to use email to get online answers to brief writing questions (writingQ@mail.orst.edu).

Course Content
The course begins by introducing action research and active listening as two modes of inquiry for doing research and understanding the complex issues surrounding environmental justice in Oregon today. The subject matter then becomes more practical in the sense that the group goes out into fishing, agricultural and industrial communities in order to listen to the perspectives of different stakeholders. Throughout the week students will also be reflecting on course readings, writing journal entries, formulating questions for the stakeholders, processing interviews and watching short films on the topic. By doing all of these activities students will get a better understanding of the ways in which various stakeholder groups in Oregon regard the issue of environmental justice from their own standpoint.

Course Schedule

Sunday March 21 OSU/Newport
8:15-8:30 am Arrive on site Strand Ag building. Pack belongings into the vans
8:30-9:30 am Paul Barkley (Discussion of Environmental Justice Issues General Over view). Meeting in the Honors College Classroom
9:30-10:30 am Lani Roberts (Discussion of Environmental ethics and justice). Meeting in the Honors College Classroom
11:00- 12:30 pm Travel to New Port in Vans--Ice Breaker Questionnaire in the Van
12:30-1:30 Unpack--divide up into sleeping quarters--buffet lunch served and eaten
1:30-2:30 Ice breaker debriefing session, Kurt and Dwaine answer any housekeeping questions about the syllabi, requirements for the class.
2:30-3:30 pm Bob Zybeck Overview of the history of New Port Area with a focus on Environmental History and justice.
3:30-4:00 pm Break
4:00-6:00 pm Action learning Exercises. Baggage exercise.
6:00-7:00 pm Dinner time
7:00-8:00 pm Meet with Dave Hatch (Otter Restoration Project--Siletz tribe).
8:00-10:00 pm Active Listening exercises. Developing questions for stakeholders the next day.

Monday March 22 Newport
8:00-9:00 am Breakfast, make lunches
9:00-10:00 am Video--When Cultures Collide.
10:00-11:00 am Connie Kennedy (Chair of the Fisherman's Wives of New Port)
11:00-12:00 pm Discovery Centre Exploration
12:00-1:00 pm Lunch on the beach
1:00-2:00 pm Pack up and clean up site rooms.
2:00-3:00 pm Meet with Fran Recht (Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission Habitat).
3:00-4:00 pm Begin Debriefing session
5:00-6:00 pm Dinner preparation
6:30-8:30 pm Debrief session/ Develop questions for next days stakeholders
9:30 pm Return to Oregon State University.

Tuesday March 23 Salem
8:00-9:00 am Drive to Salem--- Marion County Extension Office.
9:00-10:00 am Ron Eber -State Department of Land Development and Conservation--Manager
10:00-11:00 am Discuss readings, finalize questions for stakeholders.
11:00-12:00 pm PACE-EH Multnomah Environmental Health Division NGO. Kevin Odell and Charles Bishop
12:00-1:00 pm Lunch - Students provide own lunch
1:00-2:00 pm Peter Gutowsky (Natural Resource Planner for the City of Salem)
2:00-3:00 pm EJAG representative Jeri Sundaval
4:00-5:00 pm Meet with Brian Cheesborough (Jerry's Building Supplies) - OSU Honors College
5:30-9:00 pm Return to OSU. Debrief and Develop Questions for Next day. Pizza dinner provided.

Wednesday March 24 Corvallis
8:00-8:30 am Drive to Albany Paper Company
9:00-10:30 am Tour of the Albany Paper plant. Talk with John Hayward--Plant Supervisor.
11:00-12:00 pm Meet with Helen Berg Mayor of Corvallis. Meet in Native Longhouse OSU.
12:00-12:45 pm Lunch--Students supply own sack lunch
1:00-3:00 pm Hewlett Packard. Tour of plant followed by a stakeholder interview with Steve Love--Plant Environmental Manager.
4:00-5:30 pm Meet with Larry Venell (Oregon Farmer)--Meeting at Venell Farm.
6:00-9:00 pm Debriefing and establishing of stakeholder interviews for the following day. Dinner provided--Pizza in the Honors College Classroom
9:00 pm Return Vans to Motor Pool

Thursday March 25 Corvallis
8:00-9:00 am Jesse Sowa Gazette Times Media Representative. Meeting at the Native American Long House.
9:00-10:00 am Emory Castle OSU Agricultural Economics Faculty. Meeting at the Native American Long House.
10:00-12:30 am Web Training Education Hall Room 126--Facilitated by Dwaine Plaza
12:30-1:30 am Lunch
1:30-5:30 pm Debriefing and Preparation for Final Presentation Honors College Classroom
5:30-6:00 pm Set up Westminster House
6:00-8:30 pm Stakeholder Dinner and Final Presentation at Westminster House
8:30 pm Class Officially ends

Intellectual Engagement and Active Participation
During the five day period that the course runs, we expect each student to at various times be an active listener, facilitator, recorder, presenter and an overall collegial and sensitive member of the learning team for all activities. At the end of the five days each person will be asked to submit a self evaluation of their performance and learning throughout the process. The self-evaluation will be used by the teaching team for assessing the individual's final grade. Overall, intellectual engagement and active participation will be worth 30 percent of the final grade.

Reflection Journal
One of your central learning activities during this course will be keeping a personal reflection journal. You should think of this writing as talking out loud or thinking out loud. And you should realize that some of your most interesting (to you, we mean) and productive journal entries may well begin with questions or notions that you haven't really thought about much. They might also be observations of the stakeholders perspectives/ positions on education that make you wonder. If you are used to writing essays and tests only, then you'll need a paradigm shift. You will need to lower your standards in order to get the full benefits of your journal. Think about it: essays and tests ask you to be sure. They ask you to write clearly and authoritatively about a topic that you've come to some conclusions about (or even master). Part of the challenge of writing essays and tests lies in deciding for yourself what your conclusions are. No doubt you will come to conclusions during this short course and you can certainly use your journal to reflect on them and examine them. But you can and should also use the journal to try out new ideas, to pick up on some aspect of a stakeholders concerns or class discussion that you disagreed with or agreed with or that we didn't get to fully air. The journal can and should be your place to continue our class discussions and your conversations while out in the field. It can and should be your place to record your reactions to the reading you do. Your entries can agree or disagree with the readings. You can argue with it, or just talk about what might be confusing in your readings. If you end up temporarily lost or at a dead end, that's reasonable and even useful. The point is that you're using the journal to become fully involved in all the issues the course raises and your action learning experience is giving you. Don't forget to go back and re-read earlier entries; sometimes they'll still look accurate, sometimes they'll look naive, and sometimes you'll find that you now have answers to earlier questions. These insights can become new entries. Finally, use your journal to draw connections between this course and the others you've had.

Grading of Journals
The reflection journal counts for 20 percent of your grade. It will be evaluated according to three criteria: commitment, ambition and engagement. Your journals will NOT be graded according to correctness or paragraphing or sentence structure. So feel free to write quickly. Punctuate in any way that makes sense at the time. Your journal will need to include a reflection on each article in the course kit. Reflections on each stakeholder and the newspaper articles in the course kit are also expected to be part of the journal. Note, we expect that you will have at least 15 pages of handwritten commentary in your journal by the time you submit it for grading.

Book Critique (Due April 16, 2004)
Apart from the reflection journal, we want you to complete a critique of the course text: Anatomy of a Conflict: Identity, Knowledge, and Emotion in Old-Growth Forests by Terre Satterfield. This book explores the cultural aspects of the fierce dispute between activist loggers and environmentalists over the fate of Oregon's temperate rain forest. The book centers on old- growth logging practices and the survival of the northern spotted owl. This conflict has led to the torching of ranger stations, the spiking of trees, logging truck blockades, and countless demonstrations and arrests in the last fifteen years. The author, shows how the debate about the forest is, at its core, a debate about the cultural make-up of the Pacific Northwest. This Spring Break class focuses on many of the issues discussed by Satterfield. These issues and others like them may emerge in our conversations with stakeholders. In light of this we would like you to examine the book's contents and compare them to the themes found in the other reading kit materials. You should be able to discuss how the sentiments of the interviewed stakeholders relate to the themes in the book. Cite specific examples when writing your critique. The book critique should be creative and take into consideration: content, theme, and insights, in the various sections of the book. The book critique should be a minimum of 3 pages in length and submitted in TYPED (double spaced) form. The book critique is worth 15% of your final grade.

Writing to Learn In Class Exercises
Throughout the week you will be asked to spend 5 minutes of in-class time to participate in short writing to learn activities. The purpose of these exercises is to help you learn more about the course content. These exercises may include: write and pass, micro-themes, reading response questions, media/film reflections, or end of class observations. These writing to learn exercises require no more than one or two paragraphs of written response in your journal. Your written work will be submitted to the instructors in your journal at the end of the course.

Web Page Participation
Students will work alone or in groups of two to construct a mini-web page. Each mini web page will ultimately be joined together to form one large class web page. The web page will have Environmental Justice in Oregon as its main focus. Each mini-web page should have a theme, which is based on the course readings, classroom discussions, or stakeholder issues. Each mini-web page also needs to include a statement about the learning experienced during the course by each individual or group. In addition students are expected to surf the Internet and find other sites which discuss the theme they are interested in. These newly discovered sites should be included as hot links on your web page where additional information on the topic can be found. We envision the final class web page to be one which captures the overall learning experience from the students perspective. Some training will be provided on how to construct a web page but not much. The web page activity will be worth 15% or your final grade.

Group Presentation
Throughout this course emphasis is being placed on listening and thinking critically about Environmental Justice issues. It is in this spirit that you are asked to critically explore and present the competing arguments, which you learned throughout the week. As a group we will decide by consensus on the best way to present back to the stakeholders what we have learned throughout the week. Each mini-presentation group will consist of 2-3 people. All presenters will be limited in terms of visual resources. Presenters can use an overhead projector, power point projector, colored markers, or bristol board paper. The group presentation activity will be worth 15% of your final grade.

Self Evaluation
You will be asked to provide the teaching team with a self evaluation of your participation and learning in the course. The team will consider your self-evaluation when calculating a final grade for your intellectual engagement and participation throughout the course (keep in mind however that we may not arrive at the same conclusion!). The self-evaluation will be in the form of a letter to the teaching team. The letter does not have to be formal, but you need to include comments on your performance from the following areas. How did you do as: an active listener, facilitator, recorder, presenter, participant in group debriefing sessions, and as an overall collegial and sensitive member of the learning team. Did you experience intellectual growth which you feel might be attributed to your experience with this course. Overall, considering all of these factors, what letter grade would you assign for yourself using the scale of (A, B, C, D, or F)? Please submit your self-evaluation letter along with the other materials by April 16, 2004.