Green Mountain College: An Eco Tinge to Every Major
High school and college students are more ecologically aware than ever, but a desire to help the earth doesn’t have to mean giving up your passion for art, literature, education and psychology to focus on traditionally “green” careers. More and more colleges are tying the environment to every program of study, including Vermont’s Green Mountain College.
The college’s director of communications, Kevin Coburn, explained it a bit to CTI Career Search:
“We offer the traditional majors and minors that you will find at a liberal arts college, like art, biology, history, education, psychology. If you are majoring in business, you are going to be concentrating a lot on sustainable business practices, like the triple bottom line for instance,” he said. “Every student that graduates has a very deep and broad grounding in environmental topics. Over the years we have developed a student body that takes sustainability very seriously.”
That is evidenced in a number of ways on campus, among them the Renewable Energy and EcoDesign Certificate Program, or REED, which was introduced in the fall of 2009. REED allows undergraduate students of any discipline to explore the renewable energy and green building fields. Like GMC’s ELA curriculum, the program is field-based and interdisciplinary.
While it is helpful to students who plan to pursue careers in the renewable energy or green building fields, it is open to any interested student as a means of enriching their knowledge of environmental and ecological issues. Students, in addition to receiving a certificate, can gain valuable job experience through working for credit on projects with the program’s partner companies, like Solar Energy International and Yestermorrow Design/Build School.
What an awesome approach to secondary education – this is exactly the type of mindset that we need from learning institutions, to encourage unity on issues affecting the earth.
Of course, it’s not too surprising coming from Green Mountain College, which is known for being ahead of the curve. GMC already has a “progressive program” in which students define their own educational goals, and it’s also home to the first ever distance Masters program in Business Administration with a focus on sustainable business. (There’s a distance Masters program in Environmental Studies, too!)
Link CTI Career Search
Related posts:
- Green College Spotlight: Grinnell College
- Green College Spotlight: Pomona College
- Green College Spotlight: Colorado College
- Green College Spotlight: University of New Hampshire
- College Students Seek Out More Green Classes
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 11:00 am and is filed under Consciousness, Green Living, Health, Science, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
