WATER AND HEALTH INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSE COLLABORATION: PROMOTING EARTH PROCESS AWARENESS AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

An interdisciplinary collaboration among Geology, Environmental Science, Political Science, and Communication Arts allowed undergraduate students from a range of majors in natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences to explore connections between earth processes, human actions, government policies, and human health.

Course	Student Population
Environmental Geology	28 freshmen-seniors; geology and environmental science majors and non-science majors fulfilling science requirement
Environmental Problem Solving	20 sophomores-juniors; environmental science majors and non-majors fulfilling writing seminar requirement
Health Policy	35 sophomores-seniors; advanced political science and pre-health majors
Rhetoric and Civic Engagement	15 juniors-seniors; advanced communication art majors and minors

The collaboration included: discipline-specific learning, a shared field trip, a semester-long research project, shared guest speakers, and a capstone student colloquium. The discipline-specific learning in each course addressed water and environmental health issues and provided background for the semester-long research project. The research project was introduced during a local watershed field trip. Students from all four courses participated in the field trip which provided background on water quality, water use, perceptions of water resources, and water policy. The research project was designed as an interdisciplinary task-force, to typify approaches used in industry, academics, and government, and involved teams of 4-5 students combined from each course. Student groups were required to identify a current water-health issue at the local, national, or global scale, report on the issue and present possible solutions. Topics included: Hospitals’ Disposal Practices of Pharmaceutical Waste, Water Quality Standards in the Bottled Water Industry, and Water Efficiency in the Middle East. The collaboration modeled an applied professional context, in that students had to perform interdisciplinary research and present their results in both a written report and a poster presentation. Moreover, students learned to connect earth processes, environmental decisions, public policy, and human health outcomes, in meaningful ways that promoted a sense of citizenship and civic engagement.