Overall Rating Gold
Overall Score 70.13
Liaison John Alejandro
Submission Date March 24, 2021

STARS v2.2

University of San Diego
AC-5: Immersive Experience

Status Score Responsible Party
Complete 2.00 / 2.00 Michel Boudrias
Associate Professor
Marine and Environmental Studies
"---" indicates that no data was submitted for this field

Does the institution offer at least one immersive, sustainability-focused educational study program that is one week or more in length?:
Yes

A brief description of the sustainability-focused immersive program(s) offered by the institution:

1. Students in Environmental and Ocean Sciences have spent full semesters abroad at programs designed and implemented by the School for Field Studies. Recent examples include participation in the programs in Peru, Costa Rica, Turks and Caicos Islands, Cambodia, and Tanzania. For all of these programs, the core issues included sustainable agricultural practices with particular emphasis on the role of women in the villages. Class and research projects centered on environmental aspects (water use, pollution, sustainable growing practices) as well as sociological/cultural issues like the role of women as leaders in the community and the need for more education of young women and all projects looked at the economic implications of the research.

2. Eleven students who participated in the integrated sustainability-themed cluster of courses in Environmental Science, Sociology, and Political Science in New Zealand during June 2019. The whole program connected content across the disciplines with field trips, community connections, and integrated reporting.

3. All majors in Environmental and Ocean Sciences take EOSC 301 Research Application which combines lecture, field and lab work with a direct, real-world integrated course with students collecting and analyzing a whole suite of data (biology, chemistry, geology) that has become a long-term study of an impacted urban ecosystem. The whole class connects real data with real solutions.


Website URL where information about the institution’s immersive education programs is available:
Additional documentation to support the submission:
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Data source(s) and notes about the submission:
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