CREATING A GEO-ENVIRONMENTAL SENSE OF PLACE FOR URBAN LEARNERS AND FUTURE URBAN TEACHERS, MINNEAPOLIS-SAINT PAUL, MN

A new program in Earth and Environmental Science at Metropolitan State University focuses on the geologic and environmental substrate of Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN. The curriculum serves two groups of students in a rapidly expanding urban university: non-science majors seeking to fulfill general education requirements, and a growing group of students enrolled in the university’s Urban Teacher Program (UTP), who seek licensure in Earth and Space Science. Developing an understanding of the geology, ecology, and environmental history of the Twin Cities is especially critical for UTP students, most of whom will spend their careers working with diverse urban learners in the Minneapolis and Saint Paul public schools.

For most urban dwellers, the city-scape is defined by architecture, infrastructure, and social and cultural institutions. As a result, urban learners may lack direct experience with features of the natural systems that underlie their sense of place, leading them to view the natural world as something that exists only outside the city. To compound this problem, traditional texts and modes of instruction may lead students to believe that the geosciences involve work only in deserts, mountain meadows, or onboard ocean research vessels, all remote and unfamiliar places.

It is tempting to imagine that engaging students’ interest might simply involve stripping off the veneer of the local urban infrastructure to reveal the natural earth systems below. While this approach is possible, and in fact extremely valuable in some cases, it also overlooks rich possibilities for students to understand human interactions with earth systems.

As a local example, direct observation of the lithology of the Saint Peter Sandstone is key to interpretation of its deposition along the shoreline of tropical Ordovician seas. But the same observed characteristics also have profound implications for its stability on the bluffs of the Mississippi River, its properties as an aquifer and as a conduit for pollutants, and for its poor suitability as a foundation for tall buildings or bridges. These kinds of additional details expand students’ pre-existing sense of place to incorporate valuable scientific content, rather than invoking places too remote or events too abstract to seem relevant.