Champlain College
AC-5: Immersive Experience

Center for Service & Sustainability Service Trips: The Center for Service & Sustainability organizes several service trips throughout the year that take groups of students to different communities to learn and volunteer. We have organized trips to four different continents and over eight different countries, as well as domestic service trips throughout the United States. Some of our previous trip destinations include Entebbe, Uganda; Charesca, Nicaragua; Bagamoyo, Tanzania; Monroe, North Carolina; and Apopka, Florida. While on these trips students perform direct service in response to community needs and learn about issues such as hunger, homelessness, access to healthcare, education systems, and poverty as they relate to the community they are visiting. www.champlain.edu/servicetrips

COR 330 - “Life” in the Amazon: Human and Ecological Communities: The Amazon River Basin (ARB) is the most biodiverse place on Earth; it is also home to hundreds of human communities, making it a unique and appropriate setting to study the intersection of humanity and ecology. In this course we will explore various lifeways and perspectives of human and ecological communities of the ARB along a gradient of the contested concept of “development.” With special interest topics in tropical forest ecology, traditional ecological knowledge, political ecology, the traditions of Andean and Amazonian indigenous peoples, and bee-keeping as a form of community-driven development, this interdisciplinary course will explore how various communities perceive and interact with their respective environments, highlight the exceptional characteristics of Amazon ecosystems, and investigate the effects of colonialism and globalization on the landscape and peoples of the Amazon. This course comes with an optional two-week travel component to Cusco and Iquitos, Peru and surrounds in late May. In keeping with the course themes, we will experience various lifeways in the Peruvian Amazon along a gradient of development, specifically, from the semi-industrialized and populous Iquitos, to the rural, yet connected community of Chino, and finally the remote and sparsely-populated community of Diamante.

EHS 495 - INT’L SERVICE INTERNSHIP: THE GAMBIA: This course allows Education & Human Studies majors to partake in international service internship placements. The course includes a four-week trip to The Gambia, a small but thriving country in western Africa. The international setting facilitates learning around cultural sensitivity and global awareness.

CCM 301 - Montreal: Emerging Media and Innovation: Focusing on new media and technology development in Montreal, students will examine culture, recent history, and signs of modernity in the city through new mediums such as interactive installations, projection mapping, immersive environments, and augmented reality. They will explore the creative industries of Montreal, the social impact surrounding innovation, and the ethical aspects surrounding new media initiatives. Students will research, discuss, analyze and conceptualize new technology systems and multimedia designs.

ENP 200 - Sustainability and Environmental Policy: Students will examine how the political vision developed by our forefathers, based on maximum exploitation of seemingly unlimited natural resources, has shaped policy and management and has led to current pressing environmental issues. Students will explore the history of US environmental policy and its role in forming domestic and international policies and laws. The evolution of the concept of sustainability and how that is shaping natural resource policy and management both nationally and globally will be considered in-depth.

ENP 300 - Place-Based Environmental Policy: Students will engage in a place-based approach to understanding our relationship with the environment. Applied examples of innovative sustainability initiatives and policies will be investigated through field trips, readings, and guest speakers. Students will gain a deeper understanding of local issues and solutions and how they fit into national and global contexts and how they can be implemented to work for change.

INV 430 - Social Entrepreneurship: Addresses the opportunities and challenges faced by social entrepreneurs as they build cooperative ventures with non-profits, governments, NGOs, and businesses to address world problems. Innovation entrepreneurial thinking and global awareness are merged to help students think creatively about causes and solutions to public challenges and to analyze the economic, social, and political context that defines entrepreneurial opportunity. Students will be exposed to the mechanics of starting or managing a social enterprise with an eye toward sustainability, impact, innovation, and leadership.

SCI 100 - Sino-Amer Exchange for Environmental Leadership: Students study regional natural history and natural resource management in a three-week summer, residential field program based at ChamplainCollege. Each American student is required to investigate specific and current hot topics in environmental policy with a Chinese student. Prior to the field program, students will develop a review paper addressing the complexity of the topic that they have selected. During the program, they will have an opportunity to visit sites and meet with professionals directly, associated with their topic. Students will have access to technology to continue research on the Champlain campus. At the close of the program, American and Chinese students will co-author a position statement and offer a public presentation of their findings on campus. Effective student papers will be published in Green Across the Pacifics annual magazine and distributed to policymakers and the general public to further meaningful debate about regional natural resource management and sustainability. This independent,student-driven work will be embedded in the context of a broad overview of the region's natural history, economy, and politics. Sharing This work with Chinese students will broaden the perspective and worldview of all participants.

SCI 310 - Advanced Environmental Earth Science: Advanced Environmental Earth Science is an upper-level course designed to provide students with an advanced understanding of environmental systems, including primary research literature research design and formal scientific report writing. Topics include complex systems climate change, climate models, quantification of sustainability, energy, water quality and conservation, trophic ecology, urban ecology, environmental health, and food systems. The course will consist of lectures, discussion lab activities, and a student-generated independent scientific research project.

Course descriptions come from College Catalog: https://catalog.champlain.edu/index.php