Dalhousie University
AC-5: Immersive Experience

RBC Sustainability Leadership Certificate – 

The program offers student the opportunity to participate in an engaged exploration of personal and group leadership, empower their sense of personal agency to address environmental and social change, gain competencies and practical tools to take effective sustainability actions, demonstrate leadership to increase sustainability in all aspects of our lives, and develop skills to inspire, motivate and build capacity in others to lead change. During the program, participating students attend three weekend seminars and take part in engaged learning projects between the weekends. 

Local Approaches to Sustainability Field Course 

This is an intensive 2-week field course (all day Monday – Friday) with a mixture of classroom learning and day field excursions. This course offers students a collaborative learning opportunity to critically investigate and explore multi-faceted ways of how to approach local sustainability issues. From theory to practice, this course engages students in practices of community engagement and place-based learning; both practices are growing fields of research and increasingly applied in both the natural and social sciences. The course allows for immersion and personal engagement with the local community and the environment in situ and offers different ways of experiencing and exploring oral stories, sites of interest, affected areas, and the humans involved. This formative learning experience is inherently interdisciplinary and engages multiple modalities to address different learning styles and diverse perspectives. 

Measuring Food Sustainability Field Course  

Integrating the expertise of numerous faculty and community leaders, this field course explores how food sustainability is measured and evaluated across different disciplines. Daily hands-on, active, and experiential learning is emphasized throughout the course. The course activities and assessments range from agricultural biodiversity monitoring via beetle surveys to a summative design challenge exploring a possible solution to a food sustainability measurement challenge. 

Sustainability Engagement Project  

SUST 3002 is an experiential learning class which provides students with a hands-on engagement experience to pursue questions of personal and academic interest relevant to the field. In this course, students work on a specific project at an approved community partner, for approximately six to eight hours per week over a 10-12-week period (60-80 hours). 

Biology SEASIDE courses – 

The Biology Department offers a number of hand-on, condensed courses during the summer that take students into the field, both locally and overseas. Examples of SEASIDE courses include: Field Studies of Marine Mammals, The Flora of Nova Scotia, Applied Field Methods in Fish Ecology, Agroforestry, Tropical Ecology and Biodiversity, Species Invasions.  

 Earth & Environmental Sciences Field Schools – 

The Earth and Environmental Sciences Department provides two field schools for undergraduate students. The Urban Field School offers an introduction to urban environmental science by examining the role of humans in ecosystems and how humans change ecosystem processes and functions within urban areas. It runs for a week and a half in the spring. The Environmental Science Field School is a required class that includes day trips and multi-night overnight camping. Topics that may be covered include sustainable forestry, environmental geology, intertidal community monitoring, freshwater systems, use of GPS and GIS, urban environmental quality, and species at risk. This class is offered at the end of the summer.