The Environmental Studies Department at Dickinson College has recently been awarded a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to develop a single interdisciplinary, integrated course, for the equivalent of a student's normal 4-course load, combining classroom activities, community-based fieldwork research, independent study, and extensive travel and immersion in two comparative watershed regions: the Chesapeake Bay and the lower Mississippi River Basin. This course will be offered during the Fall semesters of 2005, 2006, and 2007 to 15-20 Dickinson students. One of the main goals of the course is to connect students with affected communities, building on relationships already established through the ALLARM program and by having students do research projects related to the communities' needs. The course work will focus on aquatic science, environmental justice, coastal geomorphology, resource-dependent communities, and environmental policy and management.

Students will spend a week in September in the Chesapeake Bay and along the Atlantic coast and three weeks in November in southern coastal Louisiana, studying the ecosystems and learning from the local residents. The remaining nine weeks of the semester will be spent closer to campus, in the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay drainage basin. All students will also complete an independent research project in consultation and collaboration with a community group.

The Chesapeake Bay and the lower Mississippi River regions represent the two largest estuarine regions in the US, and both are being seriously threatened by human activities, resulting in loss of biodiversity, commercial fisheries, land, and serious threats to the local human communities dependent on these resources. If you would like more details of our planned activities, click on the menu to the left!