Transcript Fostering critical thinking in the advanced inorganic

Finding One’s Place in the World:
Facing Grand Challenges
First Year Seminar 2015
Wittenberg’s Mission Statement
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Wittenberg University provides a liberal arts education dedicated to intellectual
inquiry and wholeness of person within a diverse residential community.
Reflecting its Lutheran heritage, Wittenberg challenges students to become
responsible global citizens, to discover their callings, and to lead personal,
professional, and civic lives of creativity, service, compassion, and integrity.
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What responsibilities do you believe we have toward each other
within our own diverse residential community?
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What does it mean to you to become a responsible global citizen?
Share your thoughts with someone near you and then discuss as a class.
Finding One’s Place in the World
• Goals for today’s discussion:
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– to consider our responsibilities as members of
various local and global communities
– to increase our awareness of the impact of our
choices and actions on those around us in the face
of climate change
– to better understand the term “sustainability” and
what it means in the Wittenberg context and
beyond.
Climate Change
• Watch the following video clips: “CO2 in
the Ice Core Record” and “It’s Us”
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http://earththeoperatorsmanual.com/main-video/earth-the-operatorsmanual
• How do we know climate change is
caused by human activity? Discuss first
with a partner and then with the class.
Sustainability
• In a world of limited
resources and
climate change, what
does the term
“sustainability” mean
to you?
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Jot down your ideas,
Compare your ideas with another
student,
Share with the entire class.
Sustainability
• One of the most frequently cited definitions of
sustainability is from “Our Common Future”*:
– meeting the needs of the present generation
without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their needs.
• How does this compare to your definition? Do you
think in general that people are living sustainably?
*Our Common Future”, also known as the Brundtland Report, was published in 1987 by the
United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development
Sustainability:
meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their needs
• Sustainability is frequently
divided into the 3 pillars you
see on the left.
• Form 3 groups in your class
and imagine you are decision
makers for Wittenberg,
Springfield, or the United
Nations. Identify
development goals or
examples for ONE pillar given
the challenges of climate
change. These may be at the
local and/or global level.
Sustainability:
meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their needs
• Share your goals and
examples for each pillar.
• Can you find overlaps
between the 3 that fit the
above definition of
sustainability?
• Compare your results with
examples from the EPA.
http://epa.gov/ncer/rfa/forms/sustainability_primer_v7.pdf
Sustainability:
meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their needs
• What ways can you think of to live more sustainably
while at Wittenberg?
• Can you come up with ways that intersect with the
three pillars of sustainability?
How can we contribute through personal & collective
action to a more sustainable planet in the face of global
climate change?