Faculty First Year Seminars 197JRN4 - The Story of Water

The most immediate goal is to create a truly interdisciplinary brand new course devoted to the topic of ?water.? This course would be co-taught by Razvan Sibii (Journalism) and Heath Hatch (Physics) Course goals: 1) To demonstrate a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to understanding and addressing ?wicked problems? such as water management in the 21st century, 2) To stimulate interdisciplinary thinking around such issues, 3) To acquire information that can be used to inform the students? own lifestyle choice, as well as their career choices, 4) To determine students to step outside their disciplinary comfort zone and practice skills associated with each one of the three pillars of sustainability: economy (basic understanding of micro/macroeconomics and statistics, project design & management), society (journalistic-like ability to collect information, assess it, package it and disseminate it to targeted audiences, media analysis and criticism), and environment (a decent understanding of water?s role in the ecosystem, its status as a finite resource, the science of water, etc.), and 5) To continue getting the students accustomed to working in a team on a semester-long multifaceted project.

Freshmen Only