Sustainable Centre: Academics
Centre College is committed to providing students a holistic liberal arts education that includes acquiring and strengthening an appreciation for our environment.
There are currently 20 courses offered regularly among Centre’s academic disciplines in which sustainability and environmental concerns are the primary focus. Some of those disciplines include government, economics, history, biology, psychobiology, religion, anthropology, English, and natural science.
The environmental studies program committee at Centre is currently discussing extending the established Environmental Studies minor program in the future to offer a major, in addition to developing a course exploring global environment and sustainability, which may be structured under the existing Environmental Studies minor.
Environmental Studies minor
Centre’s environmental studies minor, established in 2003, is designed to help students examine the causes and consequences of human dependence on the environment in order to fashion ways of living equitably and sustainably with other species.
This minor incorporates ideas and information from a wide variety of fields: economics, anthropology, history, philosophy, religion, biology, and chemistry. It’s common for students to major in one of these areas and to compliment it with an environmental studies minor.
Courses in the Environmental Studies minor include, among others: “Regulating the Environment,” “Getting Back to Nature,” “Sustainability,” “Environmental Ethics,” and “World Hunger and the Environment.” Click here to learn more about the minor, explore details of each course, and to meet the program’s faculty members.
Self-designed sustainability majors
Centre offers students the unique option of designing their own major, and often students choose to design one around the study of sustainability. For example:
Bethany Pratt ’10 created a major titled “Environmental Studies: Sustainable Resource Use,” which heavily included biology and anthropology/sociology courses but also integrated history and English courses. She also incorporated studio art courses as well as study abroad trips.
In 2009, Bethany was recognized for her environmental leadership when she became the College’s first-ever recipient of the prestigious Udall Scholarship. Click here for that story; click here to read more about her self-designed major experience.
An environmentally focused faculty
Many professors who make up the Centre faculty are devoted to incorporating responsible sustainability lessons into their classrooms. Here are just a few examples of how this is accomplished:
Centre College is one of 16 members of the Associated Colleges of the South. Since 2003, Dr. Elizabeth MacNabb has served as an ACS visiting assistant professor of humanities and environmental studies at Centre as part of the ACS Environmental Programs. The mission of the ACS Environmental Programs is to foster collaboration in environmental studies and activities among faculty, staff, and students at the member institutions.
Dr. Cindy Isenhour joined Centre’s faculty in 2011 as an ACS post-doctoral fellow in environmental studies. Isenhour's areas of research and interest include environment-economy linkages, political ecology, sustainability, environmental governance and policy, environmental ethics, and economic anthropology.
She earned a B.A. in communications from Miami University, an M.A. in anthropology from Colorado State University, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Kentucky.
Dr. Mike Barton, professor of biology, created and teaches a CentreTerm course titled “Your Automobile, Our Environment,” which explores the social and environmental impact that our perceived need for personal transportation has had.
Economics professor Dr. David Anderson authored a recent book called Treading Lightly: The Joy of Conservation, Moderation, and Simple Living, which takes lessons he learned from his parents' WWII thriftiness and conservation skills and applies them to everyday modern living.
In addition, in his personal home, Dr. Anderson has incorporated a geothermal heating and cooling system, dual-flush toilets, a rain barrel that provides free water for his gardens and a compost bin that turns his trash into usable soil. In the fall of 2009, he had installed an eight-panel solar array on his roof that will generate about 2,356 kilowatts every year.
Click here to learn about the faculty members who teach courses in the Environmental Studies (ENS) minor program.
