Professor Nicole Gross-Camp's ENV 352: Connecting the Classroom to the Community

Connecting the Classroom to the Community Professor Nicole Gross-Camp’s ENV 352:

By Dave Roncolato ’79, Director of Civic Engagement

Professor Nicole Gross-Camp demonstrated the power of connecting course content with a community project as part of her Environmental Justice course (ENV352). With financial support from the Gail Howe Fahrner Fund for Community Engagement, Professor Gross-Camp worked over this past summer to connect with community partners to introduce a service learning component (SLC) to her course. The goal of adding this component was to shift students’ understanding of environmental justice as a concept or framework being studied in the classroom, to that of an objective actively being pursued in the world. Her interest in pursuing this objective came directly from former students in the same class that described difficulty in connecting their classroom activities to their everyday lives.

The class partnered with four community organizations, including the French Creek Valley Conservancy, Center for Family Services, Green New Deal Crawford County, and the Crawford County Mental Health Awareness Program (CHAPS). Five students worked with CHAPS to bring awareness and education focused on homelessness in our Meadville area. The students in partnership with CHAPS and other social service agencies hosted a remarkable event in Diamond Park on Friday, November 15. In rural areas, serious homelessness is often not as visible as it is in urban areas. To bring awareness to the issue, 310 luminaria and mock T-shirts were visible along the sidewalks in the park. Each light represented one person in Crawford County known to be affected by homelessness during the past year.

The hard work, initiative and dedication of Professor Gross-Camp paid off. An important issue was brought to awareness for our community. Beyond this, the students in the class left the “Allegheny Bubble” and applied lessons to a “real world” issue in our community. Emily Kauchak, a student in the class, wrote:

Environmental justice applies not just to the natural world, but is integrally linked to that of the social world as well. Housing access, mental health services, hunger and employment are all aspects of the social environment that warrant cost and benefit analysis. The efforts of Environmental Studies 352 to bring awareness and open up conversations were recognized and appreciated.    Allegheny College and the City

of Meadville have always acted like two separate worlds, but the service-learning project brought them together and opened my eyes to the injustices around me that impact my life in ways I had not previously known.