COVENANTCOVENANT
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This page contains our program's covenant. Currently, you'll find the primary, faculty-generated covenant below. Students will collaborate to produce additions to the covenant that address personal learning goals, seminar values, and the particular goals of our learning community.
Covenants are the foundation of a "learning community."
It is like a contract between and among students & faculty.
A covenant can establish procedures in case of conflict or grievance, dictate how to resolve problems, suggest consequences and affirm values around attendance, participation, and completion of work.
The covenant is not directly related to evaluations or to credit except in extreme circumstances.
Some of the best covenants are clear and authentic statements of value that address not only general convictions about respect and so on, but also set specific goals around program themes that help us to integrate our intellectual lives with the way we actually live.
OUR PLACE IN NATURE: PROGRAM COVENANT
Expectations
1. All students will be expected to learn about the natural world, both how
they perceive it and how the views of others may differ from their own.
2. All students will be expected to develop an understanding of their
3. All students must submit a self-evaluation and an evaluation of their seminar
faculty at the end of each quarter. A summative self-evaluation at the end of
winter quarter must be submitted for inclusion in the student’s transcript
before credit is awarded. Students’ self-evaluations are expected to be
serious reflections and assessments of personal and intellectual growth; they
must address specific accomplishments and demonstrate comprehension of course
concepts and themes.
4. The faculty team expects students to increase their level of responsibility
and control of seminar sessions in particular. All students are invited to work
in collaboration with faculty to enhance, change, or add to the general curriculum
in order to serve the needs and interests of the learning community as a whole.
Evaluation criteria:
1. Students need to attend all aspects of this course, to include the following:
lectures, seminars, workshops, studio, film, challenge course events, day trips,
and overnight fieldtrips. Each aspect of this course we consider integral to
the entire program, therefore students should be prepared to explain any absences.
We will note all unexplained and repeated absences from any of our many course
activities.
2. Students will be expected and required to complete all of the assigned course
readings on time. We also expect students to be fully prepared to discuss the
particular week’s readings in detail with their fellow students. We will
note the level and sincerity of student engagement with the assigned material
as part of the final evaluation.
3. Students will keep a running journal of all of their creations that result
from this course. This will include, but not be limited to, the following: weekly
writing assignments; personal notes and ideas gleaned from lectures, films,
seminars, workshops, studios; small artworks inspired by the course. We will
note the quality of these journals in our final student evaluations. The greater
the thought and progress that one shows in this journal, the more positive will
be the evaluation.
4. Narrative evaluations, both in house and summative, will address course concepts
and learning goals, listed below.
Student performance:
1. We will assume that our students will come to our course with little knowledge
about the social construct of "nature" in this country and the world
at large. Moreover, we will also assume that our students will also have little
knowledge of the historical flux in perceptions of the natural world, or about
the degree to which these perceptions shift from culture to culture.
2. In a related sense, we will assume that our students have little sense of
the discipline known as environmental history, or of the contributions it can
make to a field that has been dominated by ethnocentric discourse.
3. Our students will come to the course, we expect, with limited ability to
speak of the natural world in ways other than first person experience. By the
end of our course, they should be well prepared to speak about the natural world
as educated observers and informed scholars. We also expect our students to
emerge from our course with the ability to base their arguments on fact and
well-reasoned analysis rather than well-intentioned passion alone.
Duties, Responsibilities, and Rights of Faculty Team Members
1. Both faculty members will assume equal responsibility for advising students.
Student advising will be based primarily on evaluations made by the particular
quarter’s seminar faculty, but faculty will share advice concerning their
respective students whenever necessary.
2. Both faculty members will agree together in advance before any individual
or group wishes to switch from one faculty seminar to another.
3. Both faculty members will agree together in advance before any new student
is allowed to enroll in the course.
4. Faculty will notify students at risk of reduced credit by the end of week
five or as soon as possible.
these learning goals will be the primary basis for your fall quarter evaluation. if you're not sure how to demonstrate the accomplishment of any of these goals, or what they mean, or to which course activities they apply, talk to your faculty. click here for more info
The
Ten Key Concepts & Learning Goals for FALL 2003
The learning goals below all depend on your ability to articulate and demonstrate
learning through self-evaluation and your final portfolio.
1. To learn the key concepts and methodology of environmental history;
2. To develop historical and philosophical perspectives on nature
and apply them to the world today;
3. To develop critical reading skills including the ability
to critically analyze diverse texts and discuss their relationships.
4. To develop analytical and argumentative writing skills, including
the development of an effective writing process;
5. To develop skills related to seminar, including critical
discussion, group collaboration, and facilitation;
6. To express ideas in visual form using printmaking media;
7. To develop skills in film criticism, including the ability
to relate the form and content of films to course concepts and themes.
8. To seek a greater personal understanding of nature and place
through self-directed activities during trips and overnights
9. To demonstrate the ability to synthesize the results of program
activities, texts, and films into a coherent and personally relevant body of
knowledge.
10. To become a member of our learning community and nurture a positive and constructive role in our community.