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Green Amherst Project Encourages Administration to Divest Investments from Coal Siyu Shen ’15 News Section Editor On September 7, climate change activist Bill McKibben visited Amherst College and gave a speech in Johnson Chapel that addressed a crowd of over 800 people. It was a strong message that acted as the launching pad for Green Amherst Project’s divestment campaign on campus, a campaign advocating for the College to divest all of its direct investments from coal. In the last year, the divestment movement has rapidly picked up speed, as students from college campuses across the nation begin to urge their schools to eliminate endowment investments in coal and oil companies. It was conceived as a way to move the United States, a country where university endowments comprise 4.9 million dollars of the economy, beyond fossil fuels and towards a new, renewable energy future. In an effort to unify these collegebased movements, the Responsible Endowments Coalition (REC) was founded in 2004 and now has over 40 universities and colleges working on launching divestment campaigns. It works to encourage social change through environmental change by starting with the investment of college campuses throughout the country, which will hopefully translate to a change in policies in the broader national and political spectrum. Deidre Nelms ’13 decided to begin the effort in Amherst towards the end of August after working with the
REC over the summer. She began to discuss and plan the campaign with a group of Amherst seniors shortly before the new school year began. “We had our first meeting with the investment office to find out more about specific holdings and feasibility on September 11,� said Nelms. Eight students gathered in Dawn Bate’s office to ask her questions about the endowment and launching a divestment campaign. The largest past divestment campaign at Amherst was in 2006, when a collection of students successfully proposed divestment from Sudan, taking two academic years to work with the investment office, collect research and present a proposal to the full investment committee. The Sudan divestment policy is one that the school continues to act on even now, and the investment office continues to hold its management on its restricted company list. Green Amherst Project’s campaign is relatively modest in comparison. The goal of the campaign is to call attention to how Amherst manages its investment by urging the College to make a policy statement that would prevent future direct investment in coal. The students who form the campaign believe that the endowment is part of Amherst College’s values, which include sustainability and environmental support. To them, the investment is part of who the school is as an institution. “We have an environment studies department that tells us climate
Photo Courtesy of Barry Scott ’11
On Sept. 7, Bill McKibben, a climate change activist, spoke with students at a divestment rally in Frost Library. change is a serious issue and if we don’t act in the next 15 years, the planet will suffer consequences,� Nelms said. “If we are still invested in coal and fossil fuels, it’s almost as if we don’t believe in our own environmental message. The fact is that we don’t know what our investment
is. They say our endowment is transparent, but we only know percent — it’s definitely not.� The campaign has already created an electronic and physical petition that is circulating the student body, while also conducting individual outreach and encouraging the fac-
ulty to write letters to the Board of Trustees. Four years ago, the College had passed the creation of an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI), a student-run group composed of stuContinued on Page 3
College Explores Online Education Opportunities Amherst would be one of the first liberal arts colleges to join online education
Ethan Corey ’15 News Section Editor Amherst College may soon enter the brave new world of online education. Over the past few weeks, faculty and members of the administration have been in discussion with several consortia of colleges and universities wishing to include the College in their online courseware programs, including Coursera, a consortium founded by professors from Stanford University that offers free online courses to individuals around the world; edX, a similar program founded as a joint venture between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and 2tor, a for-profit company that offers online courses for a fee to more limited audiences. The College is exploring all of its options to determine which programs offer the College the best opportunities to further its academic mission and improve the education it offers to students. The Committee on Educational Policy, the Committee on Faculty Computing and the Information Technology Department
have all discussed the possibility of online courseware and have met with representatives from the various organizations wishing to work with the College. In addition, at the most recent faculty, President Carolyn Martin engaged with the faculty and sought their input on the issue of expanding the College into the online world. President Martin said that she saw online education as an opportunity for the College to experiment with innovative pedagogy and help shape the policy and direction of an online learning initiative. Dean of Faculty Gregory Call also highlighted the potential of online resources to transform how professors interact with their students in the classroom. “One of the ideas that interests me as a math professor is what is called blended learning, or flipping the classroom, thinking about different ways to present the material so you can use the time in class most effectively,� Dean Call said. “A number of groups have developed online materials for the technical scientific fields that use a blended approach,
with some materials prepared in advance, such as lectures to watch before class, and then students would come into class with questions ready to ask the professor.� Joining one of these consortia would make the College one of the first liberal arts colleges to become involved in the world of online education. Until July, only large universities like Harvard and Berkeley had offered courses on the web, but this summer Wesleyan University became the first liberal arts college to join an online courseware program when it signed on to Coursera, offering courses such as “The Modern and The Postmodern� and “The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound, and Color.� However, with the opportunities offered by online courseware come new challenges for the College. Chief Information Officer Gayle Barton said that effectively translating the essence of the Amherst classroom to the online setting will be the most important task in any attempts to involve the College in online courseware.
“How do we take what’s happening in a classroom and how do we transport that to outside sources? How can we take what’s best of an Amherst experience and put it online? How do you create a good peer-to-peer discussion and how do promote engagement between people through the online medium?� said Barton. In addition, some worry that online courseware has the potential to distract the faculty and divert resources away from the more important task of educating students who study on-campus. Professor Austin Sarat, of the LJST and Political Science departments, wondered about the College’s ability to adequately compensate faculty members who choose to offer online courses. “The day’s only got so many hours in it. Is it a good use of my time? And one of the questions is how are professors going to be compensated? Is the College going to give them release time? Are we going to be engaging teaching assistants in this kind of work?� asked Professor Sarat.
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