Science Spotlight: Environmental Studies

In the environmental studies department, students and professors strive to research innovative solutions to environmental issues.

Projects and interests range from building sustainable housing to studying the composition of minerals.

The program is in its 46th year, and is still going strong.

Professor of Geology Peter Ryan works in mineralogy and geochemistry.

Ryan is on academic leave this year, and will travel to for Spain this January to further his research.

“My research is more or less split into two topics: the geochemical and mineralogical analysis of bedrock-derived arsenic and uranium in Vermont ground water, and the mineralogy and geochemistry of soils developed on terraces along the tectonically active Pacific coast of Costa Rica,” said Ryan.

His work with Vermont ground water (in collaboration with his students, as well as Jon Kim of the Vermont Geological Survey) contributed to passage of a new groundwater testing law in Vermont.

In addition, his work in Costa Rica could also have the same impact.

“[It] has implications for understanding the rates and pathways by which young, nutrient-rich soils evolve into the classic nutrient poor oxisols of the tropics,” he said.

Students are also hard at work with their own projects.

Assi Askala ’15 is organizing a conference, scheduled for mid-March, tentatively called “Youth in the New Economy.” She explained the objective of her creation.

“We have the local foods movement,” she said. “We have the Socially Responsible Investment Club. We have the Sunday Night Group, which is very climate oriented. But there’s not a lot of connection between these different groups, there isn’t awareness that they’re all tackling the same problem [and] trying to change the same system.

But they are all part of what our society and economy is going through right now.

So what I want to get out of [this conference] is a link between those groups.  [I want to] raise awareness that there is an alternative working economic model out there.”

Both Ryan and Askala embody the all-encompassing environmental ethic that pervades this campus.

From their own unique angles, they are trying to tackle the intertwined economic and environmental challenges faced by this generation.

This isn’t a new phenomenon here at the College.

The environmental studies (ES) program web page boasts of the oldest undergraduate ES program in the country, “with over 900 graduates in 46 years.”

The program declares that “environmental solutions cannot come from one type of knowledge or way of thinking, not just from politics or chemistry or economics or history.

They will come instead from leaders, thinkers and innovators who can draw skills and knowledge from multiple fields of knowledge and work with teams of thinkers from every corner of the campus and the globe.”

Phoebe Howe ’15 is an architecture and environmental studies joint major currently taking core environmental studies courses in addition to the standard courses for her major.

“We aren’t spoon-fed how architecture and the environment overlap,” said Howe.

“It’s about taking classes from two different fields, and then you have to apply the two concepts on your own,” she added. “Even when I’m not focusing specifically on sustainable architecture in an architecture studio, I still end up applying concepts from my environmental studies class.”

Howe noted that this kind of education was essential for both a broad knowledge of both topics, as well as synthesis.

“It’s the epitome of liberal arts education,” she said. “You’re given two disparate topics, and you have to take the initiative to unify your overall education. And it works. It’s effective.”

But the environmental ethic extends beyond the classroom and beyond the environmental studies program.

The level to which the ethic has permeated the campus speaks to the College’s commitment to the environment on a broader scale.

Middlebury’s Solar Decathlon team embodies this commitment.

It’s a team that competes in a challenge set forth by the U.S. Department of Energy: “to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive.”

Howe was also on the Solar Decathlon design team last spring, and she spoke about her personal experience.

“To accomplish something, it involves carving time out of your schedule and making time in your day and in your life to be more conscious and intentional about what you’re doing,” she said.

Middlebury College will be returning October of 2013 to the Orange County Great Park in Irving, California where the next Solar Decathalon will be held.

According to Middlebury’s page on the official Solar Decathalon website, the  Middlebury team had this to say; “We see a house as just one piece of larger human and natural ecosystems.

We strive to design a house that embodies the principles of a centralized community that reduces demands on transportation while facilitating greater personal interactions.

By realizing the potential of underutilized spaces, we aim to integrate a house into an existing walkable community—to suggest a model of living that is applicable on any scale. With history and nature as our guides, we hope to design a home that reflects a community and a lifestyle for a sustainable society, economy, and environment. “