Welcome to the Environmental Studies Program at Denison University!
Denison's Environmental Studies (ENVS) Program features engaging courses, accomplished faculty, top-notch facilities, small class sizes, and unique research and internship opportunities all geared to help prepare students to become tomorrow's conservation leaders.
"A Denison education trains men and women to think critically and analytically and to approach challenging issues from multiple perspectives. The curriculum in Environmental Studies at Denison, aimed at producing a sophisticated understanding of the complex relationships between human beings and the natural world, necessarily calls from students high-order problem-solving and the ability to draw upon the breadth of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities."
-Dr. Dale T. Knobel, President of Denison University
Denison Environmental Studies Program News & Updates
2009-2010 in photos: ENVS marks end of monumental academic year. Prominent environmental lecturers, national awards, increased ENVS enrollment, flurry of campus sustainability activities mark memorable year for ENVS.
ENVS Senior Fellows lead Green Graduation Pledge effort Read the open letter to graduating seniors
Seven Senior ENVS majors complete year-long Senior Research projects. Symposium featured presentations of scholarly research ranging from migrant avian frugivory to living buildings. See photos from the Senior Research Symposium.
Denison President Dale Knobel Signs Climate Commitment Long supported by ENVS students, the Climate Commitment sets Denison on a path to becoming carbon neutral.
Environmental Studies Students participate in "No Impact Week." Students blog about the trials and tribulations of living a low-carbon lifestyle on campus.
Magazine hails Environmental Studies course as "Farmland Protection Trailblazer." Taught by ENVS Program Chair Dr. Abram Kaplan, Farmscape examines the many facets of farmland preservation through the lens of a camera. Read entire article in American Farmland magazine.
Sophomore ENVS major Nicki Jimenez wins prestigious Udall scholarship . Awarded to future environmental leaders, Jimenez is one the few sophomores who received a scholarship. A record 537 candidates applied.
Denison hosts Campus Sustainability Conference in conjunction with other Great Lakes Colleges Association institutions.
Students fight for greater sustainability efforts to take hold on Denison's campus.
Denison Among Top Producers of Peace Corps Volunteers including many Environmental Studies majors and minors.
Guest lecturers and special events
Each semester Denison brings leading environmental scholars, authors and policy leaders to campus. These special guests not only give public lectures, but often participate in classroom activities, giving students unique opportunities to interact with prominent environmental experts.
Featured events from the Spring 2010 Semester included:
Campus Sustainability Conference: January 23, 2010
Campus Sustainability: in the Great Lakes Colleges Association: What Works? What's Next?
A one-day conference for faculty, students, staff and administrators
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
9:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m.
Burton D. Morgan Center
Denison University
Granville, Ohio
Conference agenda and registration
Annie Leonard: January 28, 2010
Annie Leonard is the Director of The Story of Stuff Project and narrator/host of The Story of Cap & Trade. She is the author of the forthcoming book, The Story of Stuff, from the Free Press imprint of Simon & Schuster (March 2010). The Story of Stuff, her 2008 film, has been viewed over 8 million times on-line and in thousands of schools, churches, community centers and theatres around the world.
Annie Leonard Lecture
Thursday January 28
4:30 p.m.
Slayter Auditorium
Juliet Schor: February 4, 2010
Juliet Schor is the co-founder of Center for a New American Dream a professor in the Department of Sociology at Boston College, a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient; author of The Overworked America; The Overspent American; and Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture.
Juliet Schor lecture
Thursday February 4
4:30 p.m.
Slayter Auditorium
Part 1 of a 2-part examination of Economics and Consumer Culture in the U.S.
Stephen Marglin: February 9, 2010
Stephen Marglin, holds the Walter S. Barker Chair in the Department of Economics at Harvard University and is author of How Thinking Like an Economist Ruins Communities
Stephen Marglin Lecture
Tuesday February 9
4:30 p.m.
Slayter Auditorium
Part 2 of a 2-part examination of economics and consumer culture in the U.S. and part of the Campus Sustainability Theme.
Curt Ellis: February 11, 2010
Curt Ellis, co-producer feature documentary, King Corn about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.
Big River: The Director's Cut: A screening and discussion with filmmaker and environmental activist Curt Ellis, co-creater and star of King Corn and Big River
Thursday February 11, 2009
7:30 p.m.
Burton Morgan Lecture Hall
EVENT CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER & FLIGHT CANCELLATION. EVENT WILL BE RE-SCHEDULED LATER IN SPRING
Of note: The film King Corn is available at the Denison Library. Curt Ellis will also also host the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association Conference Film Festival on Saturday February 13th in Granville.
Scott Russell Sanders: February 25
Among his more than twenty books are novels, collections of stories, and works of personal nonfiction, including Staying Put, Writing from the Center, and Hunting for Hope. His latest books are A Private History of Awe, a coming-of-age memoir, love story, and spiritual testament, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and A Conservationist Manifesto, his vision of a shift from a culture of consumption to a culture of caretaking.
His writing examines the human place in nature, the pursuit of social justice, the relation between culture and geography, and the search for a spiritual path.
Scott Russell Sanders lecture
Thursday February 25
Time TBD
Higley Auditorium
Sanders was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1945. His father came from a family of cotton farmers in Mississippi, his mother from an immigrant doctor’s family in Chicago. He spent his early childhood in Tennessee and his school years in Ohio. He studied physics and English at Brown University, graduating in 1967. With the aid of a Marshall Scholarship, he pursued graduate work at the Cambridge University, where he completed his Ph.D. in English in 1971. From 1971 until his retirement in 2009, he taught at Indiana University, from 1995 onward as Distinguished Professor of English.
Michael Pollan: April 14, 2010 - SOLD OUT
Michael Pollan is the author of more than a half dozen books, including In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Pollan appears in Food, Inc. a documentary on the food industry, and The Botany of Desire, recently broadcast on PBS. Pollan is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT
Michael Pollan Lecture
Wednesday April 14, 2010
8 p.m.
Swasey Chapel
Food Forum with Michael Pollan: April 15, 2010
Thursday April 15
12 noon - 1:30 p.m.
Slayter Auditorium
Five campus groups: Denison Community Garden/PEAS, Green Team, Dining Committee/Sodexo, the Sustainability Committee and representatives from the "Consumption" seminar to present a particular food-or sustainability- related challenge they face at Denison. Michael Pollan will then respond to these groups with tips on how to turn their creative ideas into actions plans or plans into results given his own experience with these issues.
Farmscape photography exhibit opening: April 23, 2010
Food, farms, and photography
Farmscape Juried Art Exhibition
Featuring 32 selected photographs from 16 Farmscape students
Opening
reception:
Friday, April 23
7 to 9 p.m.
Bryn Du
Mansion
537 Jones Road, Granville, Ohio
The exhibit also will be open from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 24, and from 1 to 5 p.m. on Sunday, April 25.
The reception and exhibit are free and open to the public.
John Francis: April 28, 2010
John Francis, Ph.D. founded Planetwalk in 1982 when he began his walking and sailing pilgrimage around the world. To date, Dr. Francis has walked across the U.S., sailed and walked through the Caribbean, and South America from Venezuela to Argentina and a walk in Cuba. Currently, he is continuing a walk backtracking his first walk from Cape May NJ. to Point Reyes CA.
John's stirring memoir, Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking; 17 Years of Silence was published in 2008 by the National Geographic Society.
learn more about Planet Walker
April 28
7 p.m.
Barney-Davis Board Room (second floor)
sponsored by the Goodspeed Lecture Series
ENVS Senior Research Symposium: May 4, 2010
Senior Environmental Studies Research Symposium
Tuesday May 4
12 noon- 1:30 p.m.
Barney-Davis 110