THE DAO OF DO: TEACHING UNDERGRADUATES BY MAKING THEM CONSULTANTS

A primary challenge in undergraduate education involves engaging students in ways they find meaningful and consequential beyond simply earning a grade. In 2005, we implemented a curriculum in Environmental Studies that accomplishes this goal by making students consultants to off-campus clients that have a real environmental problem needing analysis. We operationalize the approach in a series of three, vertically integrated, problem-solving courses that form the core of the major, supplemented by more traditional coursework focused on skill building in topics such as GIS, public policy, ethics, and various modes of communication (i.e., professional presentations and teamwork communication). Students are also required to complete what is essentially a heavy minor in any other discipline offered at the college, and many students double major. Students take the first problem-solving course as freshmen and the remaining two as juniors and seniors; the senior course is the capstone to the major. Students take the skill-building courses over four years with the expectation that they will apply increasingly sophisticated disciplinary skills as they progress through the problem-solving sequence. For the problem-solving courses, we recruit a new client each semester so that every offering is fresh to both the professor and the students. Professors conduct only a rudimentary review of the issue prior to the class, enough to assure that the project is feasible. Neither students nor professors have answers until we develop the project as a class, and there are no textbooks or lectures. The client presents a request for proposal the first week, student teams prepare written and oral proposals over the next 2-3 weeks, and the rest of the semester is devoted to conducting the work. The semester culminates with written and oral presentations to the client. Assessment data indicate that the primary benefit of the three-course sequence is that students develop the ability to work in interdisciplinary teams to analyze complex problems, a critical skill required by environmental professionals regardless of their disciplinary expertise.