Texas A&M University
AC-5: Immersive Experience

Geography 380, Environmental Workshop, is designed to allow students to immerse themselves in real issues of sustainability and the environment using an experiential learning approach. Class size is limited to 15 undergraduates. Each semester students focus on a single project or question and answer it using active multi-disciplinary research.

Recent topics have included:
• Water Use at Texas A&M University. (Fall 2009)
• Supporting the boundary expansion and management plan development process for the Flower Gardens Bank, National Marine Sanctuary. (Spring 2010)
• Can the Brazos Valley feed itself for a year? (Spring 2011)
• Assessing the possibilities for increased organic agriculture production in the Brazos Valley (Summer 2011)

For the summer 2011 class, students have designed and are now conducting case studies of local, organic, small-scale farms to evaluate their productivity, costs, and constraints. These will be compiled into a single final paper that will be broadly available for other farmers, students, researchers and, most importantly, for local city and regional planners. The multi-disciplinary approach allows us to evaluate the gap between the large unsaturated market for locally-produced organic vegetables and the constraints to meeting that market demand imposed by natural, economic and social forces. This course allows students to interact with a broad range of local stakeholders from within academia and within civic society, on issues of sustainability that affect us all. Geography 380 at Texas A&M University promotes professionalism and a deep understanding of sustainability issues from multiple perspectives, through immersion experience in research.