Sustainability Initiative

Curriculum

Unfurling a New Leaf

Thomas W. Murphy, Ph.D.
Edmonds Community College
 
Anthropology field schools typically take place in foreign countries and exotic locales. A new Learn-n-serve Environmental Anthropology Field (LEAF) School, launched at Edmonds Community College in Spring 2006, offers students the opportunity to study their own and neighboring communities as they engage directly in local environmental stewardship activities. In Spring 2007 the LEAF School received the Community College National Center for Community Engagement’s national award for Service-Learning Collaboration with Business and Industry.
 
The discipline of anthropology’s emphasis on participant observation facilitates the integration of service-learning into the LEAF School’s curriculum. Students earn credit in a three quarter sequence of courses in Human Ecology. During the fall and spring the students may enroll in one of the 5 credit courses. In the summer the LEAF School is full-time. Students earn 15 credits and enough hours of service-learning to qualify for a $1,000 AmeriCorps education award through Washington Campus Compact’s Students in Service program. Admission into the summer program is by online application.

The learning experiences available through service are impressive. Students learn about tribal fishing rights while helping the Stillaguamish Tribe document Coho salmon escapement and assisting the Snohomish County Marine Resources Committee in a survey of juvenile Dungeness crab habitat on local beaches. They study urban culture, activism and city parks while assisting United Indians of All Tribes Foundation and Seattle Parks and Recreation in the maintenance of an ethnobotanical garden, revitalization of historic Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center, and production of the annual Seafair Indian Days Powwow.
 
The partnership with Stilly-Snohomish Fisheries Enhancement Task Force has been a vital part of the student’s learning experiences. Students provide service at McCormick Park in Duvall, Buck Island in Monroe, Kissee Creek in Sultan, and Portage Creek Wildlife Area in Arlington, where they learn to identify native species while planting them and invasive species while removing them. In the summer students collected valuable data while monitoring vegetation at these restoration sites. In the winter they vie for the enviable opportunity to fling fish.
 
Additional projects include installation of large woody debris in North and Lyon Creek with Adopt-A-Stream Foundation, riparian zone restoration on Maxwelton and Lund’s Gulch Creeks with Whidbey Watershed Stewards and Snohomish County Surface Water Management, collection of native seeds for propagation in North Cascades National Park and on Jetty Island with Committee on the National Park Service and the Snohomish-Camano Nearshore Cooperative, and books and media recycling drives with Eco Encore. Financial support for the LEAF School comes from the American Association of Community Colleges, Washington Campus Compact, Corporation for National and Community Service, and Edmonds Community College Foundation.
 
Student experience is best summed up by one of the participants in the summer program:
“The LEAF School is the kind of opportunity that rarely presents itself more than once in a lifetime. The breadth of the experience on every level (academically, physically, and emotionally) is something that I personally have never seen in one class before. Students, teachers, and community partners came together to work with one another toward what we all hope will be a goal for the entirety of humanity someday. With academic opportunities like this, I honestly believe that there is a very strong possibility that we will see this goal realized and major social and environmental changes (for the better) will occur. This truly has been one of the most significant events of my life. The lessons I have learned will be passed on to my children and anyone else who cares to get involved with the world we all share.”
 
For more information, visit http://www.edcc.edu/leaf.