By Catherine Brereton
Students in GEO 365 Race, Food and Environment found themselves sitting at a “kitchen table” rather than in a traditional classroom for their final exam at the end of the fall 2019 semester.
The setting was part of Priscilla McCutcheon’s work to break down barriers, foster conversation and empower her students to engage in a low-pressure but sometimes uncomfortable discourse.
By Richard LeComte
The College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding TA Awards recognize excellence in undergraduate instruction by teaching assistants. Fifteen teaching assistants were recognized for the 2019-2020 academic year .
Eligible students are current A&S graduate student teaching assistants in at least their second year of graduate work and must be responsible for instruction in some or all of a course offered by the College. The TAs recognized this year taught in courses offered through A & S departments and interdisciplinary programs.
Learn more about this and other offerings at New Maps Plus, our online programs in Digital Mapping.
Due to university closure throughout the rest of the Spring semester, What Can I Do With an ENS Degree? Speaker Series has been cancelled
Winifred Bird is a journalist and translator in northwestern Illinois. Her central interest as a writer lies in nature and our place within it. She has reported on wildlife, agriculture, nuclear disaster, sea level rise, and many other topics for a wide range of national publications. You can view a few of her favorite projects by clicking on these links.
For close to a decade, she lived in rural Japan, where she divided her time between writing, growing organic rice and vegetables, and absorbing a second culture. She returned to the United States in 2014, and currently lives in a small town on the banks of the beautiful Rock River.
In addition to writing, she works as a Japanese-to-English translator and editor, primarily of academic texts in the humanities and young adult fiction. From 2009 to 2015 she was the translator and English-language editor for japan-architects.com, an online directory of contemporary architects. She frequently writes about architecture and design for Dwell and Interior Design.
Dr. Len Sauers is an Adjunct Professor of Sustainability at Xavier University where he teaches environmental and social sustainability to senior undergraduate and graduate students. Before joining Xavier, he was Vice President of Global Sustainability and Global Product Stewardship at the Procter & Gamble Company (P&G), where he retired in 2016. His primary responsibilities were to develop and execute P&G's global sustainability vision/strategy/goals, ensure its products were safe and in regulatory compliance and lead resolution of technical external relations issues (e.g. questions on environmental quality, chemical safety, animal welfare, etc.). He was P&G's primary contact for environmental and social NGOs. Dr. Sauers has a PhD in Toxicology and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology. He is currently an independent consultant in the areas of sustainability, product safety and technical external relations.
Christine Marran's research lies within the disciplinary frame of ecocriticism. Her most recent book, Ecology Without Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) argues that environmental thinking requires a critique of culture. Introducing her concepts of the “biotrope,” "ethnic environmentalism," and “obligatory storytelling,” Marran shows how cultural ideas, which work at a humanistic scale usually toward human interest, can impede our ability to speak about the more-than-human world. Through discussion of texts about industrial modernity, her new materialist approach illustrates how ecocriticism can account for things smaller and greater than a selective humanist “we” only if it takes a critical position on cultural exceptionalism. Marran’s previous book, Poison Woman: Figuring the Transgressive Woman, investigates the powerful icon of the transgressive woman, its shifting meanings, and its influence on defining women’s sexuality and place from its inception in the 1870s. Gender continues to be an important element in her work for understanding the ways in which toxins and other material aspects of industrial culture impact bodies differently. She has also written numerous articles on environmental issues in literary and visual culture.
