APRIL 9: DOWN TO EARTH - From working the land to a shared meal

Element: EARTH
Down To Earth - From working the land to a shared meal, by Wendy Johnson, author of Gardening at the Dragon's Gate At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World, with a hand-on soil demonstration by Frederique Lavoipierre, SSU garden coordinator and biology graduate student.

It takes generations to culture fertile soil. Our parents' nurturing of the soil's fertility allows us to grow our food.
In what state will we leave the soil for our children? The care for our soils and our food through the ages sustains us, from the garden to the table, and back again.
This evening will include testimony to the worth of soil, the art that comes from the living earth, the dance of stories and science as they intertwine, and a wealth of gardening lore.
WHEN: Thursday, April 9, 2009 6–9PM
WHERE: Sonoma State University, Environmental Technology Center (located on the northwest corner of campus).


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A CAMPUS MAP. On this map the ETC bldg. is #13.



Organized in conjunction with the Food Forum of Slow Food SSU.


March 12: AIR, THE ANTIDOTE TO NATURE DEFICIT

Element: AIR
Professor Rocky Rohwedder, Environmental Studies & Planning SSU, will present: AIR: The Antidote to Nature Deficit. To be followed by a panel discussion with Rocky Rohwedder, Kathleen Harrison, Ethnobotanist and Craig Anderson, Executive Director of Landpaths.

WHEN: Thursday, March 12, 2009 4–6PM
WHERE: Sonoma State University, Environmental Technology Center (located on the northwest corner of campus).

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A CAMPUS MAP. On this map the ETC bldg. is #13.


Ten years ago, before MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Halo, Twitter and Wii, national studies found that typical 8 - 13 year old kids in the U.S. were spending over 40 hours per week looking at a screen (excluding homework time). Chances are good those hours have only increased in the last decade. Meanwhile, researchers find solid links between excessive media use, and obesity and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). On a more positive note, these researchers also find that when children explore, learn and play outside in nature, these conditions and disorders subside.
Join us as we explore the antidote to nature deficit, that breath of fresh AIR we find outdoors in nature. This is just what schools and learners of all ages need –– to help revive the spirit, engage our bodies, expose us to the curriculum of natural systems, and increase the relevance of education.

Leading off this session will be Rocky Rohwedder, Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Planning, who will expand on the increasingly important role of experiential, outdoor and community-based approaches to teaching and learning. Joining Dr. Rohwedder will be a panel with Kathleen Harrison, ethnobotanist, and Craig Anderson, Executive Director of Landpaths, experts who work in professions that help connect people with the outdoor classroom.

Rocky Rohwedder is a Full Professor and past-Chair of the Department of Environmental Studies and Planning at Sonoma State University. He has a B.A. in Social Ecology (UC Irvine), an M.S. in Resource Policy and Management (University of Michigan), and a Ph.D. in Environmental Planning (UC Berkeley). Rocky received the university's outstanding teacher award, served as the founding Faculty Director of the Fairfield Osborn Preserve, and co-founded the campus Environmental Technology Center (Pedagogy of Place, Higher Education and the Challenge of Sustainability, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004). Rocky has served as a consultant for numerous initiatives and organizations, including the Middle East Peace Process (regional water education program for youth); World Resources Institute (pedagogy of digital global data); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (role of computers in environmental education); U.S. Agency for International Development (sustainable development education in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations); U.S. Peace Corps (lead consultant for first group of volunteers to work in the former Soviet Union); and the President's Council on Sustainable Development (education for sustainable development). Rocky has also worked on village-level projects in the Tibetan Highlands and on Lombok, Indonesia (What Works: A Guide to Environmental Education and Communication Projects for Practitioners and Donors, Education for Sustainability Series, 1999). In the past few years he sailed around the world with Semester at Sea and was a Visiting Scholar at the George Lucas Educational Foundation (Skywalker Ranch) and Lincoln University (Christchurch, New Zealand).

Kathleen Harrison, ethnobotanist, periodically teaches Plants & Civilization at SSU, and has guest-lectured in Anthropology on the topics of ethnographic fieldwork and indigenous nature rituals, and in California Studies on the ethnobiology of the Channel Islands. She teaches annual ethnobotany field courses for the University of Minnesota (in Hawaii) and Arizona State University (in Ecuador). She has taught as well for the California School of Herbal Studies and various other programs. Kathleen has over thirty years of fieldwork experience in Latin America and has helped establish ethnobotanical teaching gardens in Peru, Costa Rica and Hawaii. For fifteen years she has participated in an exchange of nature-based knowledge with indigenous people in the mountains of Mexico. She also does botanical illustration and enjoys helping people learn to see nature.

Craig Anderson has been the Executive Director of the Sonoma County-based nonprofit LandPaths since 1997. LandPaths was formed in budget-lean 1996 to leverage volunteer labor in order to develop and manage public access and land stewardship for a new 1100-acre State Park unit. Since that time the agency has started an educational program linking 22 schools to protected open space public and private, has been connecting people of all ages to lands protected by the county’s Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, continues to manage a 3400-acre State Park unit on the Sonoma Coast, has formed a nascent volunteer-powered preserve system with endowments and has recently embarked on the development of a Farm-Park (“fark”) with the City of Santa Rosa in the most underserved community in coastal Northern California. Craig received an MS in Range Ecology from UC Berkeley and has worked previously for the Nature Conservancy, as an outdoor guide and teacher throughout the western US and served on the General Manager’s Strategic Planning Advisory Committee for the Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District’s 30-year plan. 



NOVEMBER 20TH: THE HABITAT OF THE BODY

Element: BODY
Professor Elizabeth Herron, Poet and Psychotherapist, will present about " The Habitat of the Body"
Much of the future depends upon our imagination. How do sadness, anger and guilt hamper our vision of the future? We live and die in the body; our own and Earth's. How can we cultivate and sustain a body of love and hope?

Presented by Elizabeth Herron
WHEN: Thursday, November 20, 7-9pm
WHERE: Sonoma State University Environmental Technology Center

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FLIER FOR THIS EVENT




October 9th FORUM: The Future of the Built Environment in Sonoma County

Element: The Built Environment
A Panel with Candidates Running for Board of Supervisors in the November 4 Election. This will be an interactive forum with opportunity for questions and answers! SSU Provost Eduardo Ochoa will moderate.

WHEN: Thursday, October 9, 7-9:30PM
WHERE: Sonoma State University Library, Room 3001

Rue Furch (5th District)
Will Pier (1st District)
Sharon Wright (3rd District)
Shirlee Zane (3rd District)
Valerie Brown (1st District)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FLIER FOR THIS EVENT



PAST LECTURES/FORUMS

WATER: Brock Dolman, OAEC Water Institute

WATER

Element: WATER
September 10, 6:30PM
Location: Environmental Technology Center

Basins of Relations: Thinking like a Watershed
(click to download pdf flier)

Presented by Biologist, Brock Dolman

Water is our most important resource yet we face issues of water shortage and run-off pollution, two problems that can become one solution. Join permaculture designer and watershed expert Brock Dolman to investigate how changing our thinking and our design to slow, spread, and sink water on our property we can use less potable water, decrease flooding, improve water quality, stream structure and function, increase groundwater recharge, enhance wildlife habitat, provide short term and long term economic benefits and improve local aesthetics. Brock is a biologist, innovative permaculture design consultant, director of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center’s WATER Institute. He is a co-founder of both the Sowing Circle LLC intentional community and the widely acclaimed Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC). He has extensive experience in irrigation, uplands and riparian watershed management, natural building, wildlife biology, native plant botany, organic agriculture, perennial polyculture, sustainable forestry, seed saving, wild lands biodiversity preservation, school garden teacher training and school garden installation, alternative energy systems, consensus community and participatory social organizing methodologies. He is founder of OAEC’s WATER Institute & Basins of Relations four-day residential watershed training, which has resulted in the formation of 27 community-based watershed groups in Northern and Central California. He is on the appointed board of the Sonoma County Fish and Wildlife Commission.

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