Environmental Studies Concentration

Goddard Students The low residency MA in Individualized Studies Program offers a 48 credit concentration in Environmental Studies.

The Environmental Studies concentration offers a unique opportunity to combine place studies and environmental studies to address social and environmental issues. The work of the low residency concentration bridges nature, culture, community, sustainability, restoration, justice, and action as areas of inquiry, art, and practice. By looking particularly at place as an integrating bridge between these areas, students can conduct interdisciplinary, individualized studies that bring them and their communities greater meaning and wholeness.

Students choosing the Environmental Studies Concentration engage in a focused, rigorous, and individualized program of study guided by the themes of environment, place, and community. Students in the concentration draw from many modes and areas of inquiry and bodies of knowledge, as appropriate to their learning goals, and become familiar with place-based and environmentally-just solutions to environmental problems.

Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team Opportunity

The Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team and Goddard College provide opportunities for participating students to earn a low residency MA in Individualized Studies from Goddard College with a concentration in Environmental Studies while serving on the ACCWT. Volunteers work in coal country communities to address water pollution and poverty-related problems. Tuition assistance, living stipend, and health insurance are available through ACCWT. ACCWT is an initiative of the U.S. Office of Surface Mining and VISTA.

VISTA/West Virginia Study Opportunity

Opportunities are available to serve as a VISTA volunteer in West Virginia while pursuing graduate study at Goddard College. Volunteers work to address poverty-related issues in that state.

These opportunities to combine VISTA service and graduate study are available only through Goddard College. To participate you must be accepted to the ACCWT or VISTA/WV and separately accepted for graduate study at Goddard College.

Request more information about the low residency MA in Individualized Studies Program and the Environmental Studies Concentration

A Place-Based Approach

"The integrating concept of place provides a holistic approach to our relationships with our environment. It cuts across and beyond traditional academic disciplines. Such an understanding is a vital step toward promoting a just and sustainable world.

Time and again conservation and environmental projects have faltered or failed because they ignored local ecological circumstances, historical contingency, and distinctive cultural and personal needs. A place-based approach to environmental issues can help to avoid such problems. It provides a bottom-up approach to environmental understanding and practice by paying close attention to particular environments, communities, and people.

There are many approaches to environment and place. For example, a bioregional perspective links place to identity and local forms of governance within an ecological context. Humanistic geography provides a sophisticated social perspective on place as a phenomenon. Architects, educators, artists, writers, activists, and others view place in still other distinctive ways. Together, these multiple perspectives provide a fuller understanding of the many aspects of environment and place."

--- Ralph H. Lutts, Concentration Coordinator

MA in Individualized Studies

Environmental Studies Concentration

A Place-Based Approach

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