They’ll need a holistic skillset, says Eric Nord, chair of GU’s Department of Biology and Chemistry. “Environmental science is an interdisciplinary field that includes humanities as well as social sciences,” Nord says.
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All of this means knowledge gained in “gen ed” courses won’t gather cobwebs once Darci, Sandrine, and Gabe join the workforce.
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Presenters at the conference confirmed this. Karl Duchmann of Indiana’s Hoosier Environmental Council said writing and speaking skills help sustainability advocates gain the ear of local and state governments. They also draw from basic health classes to inform conversations they initiate with partners about healthy eating clinics and fresh food markets. Conference attendees agreed that event-planning and marketing skills helped them raise awareness about sustainability events. That’s useful information for Gabe as he seeks to grow GU’s ecology club this fall.
Sandrine, who hopes to work in environmental education or nature conservation in her home country of Rwanda, practiced one evergreen skill in real time at the conference: interpersonal communication. “It’s all about being able to form good relationships with different people,” says Sandrine, who networked with conference presenters and discovered potential job leads.
“I think a well-rounded liberal arts education provides students with many skills that will help them be effective [environmental] advocates,” Nord says.
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Workplace collaboration and the liberal arts advantage By Rachel Heston-Davis
Collaborating with near strangers is part and parcel of any new job. Working with people different from yourself requires a measure of grace, too. Experience helps. GU offered plenty of experience to Becca Winemiller ’17 and her classmate Bryson Buehrer ’17 on both counts. Becca, Bryson, and three peers worked together on an Experience First team at GU. Experience First pairs students of different majors with business partners to solve real-world problems over the course of a semester. Asking two music business majors, one audio engineering student, a biology major, and a future P.E. teacher to help develop a new product might sound unusual. But these five students found
their different skills complemented one another. One student excelled at organization and kept the group on task. One excelled at technology and managed videoconferencing with the group’s mentor. Becca used her natural mediation skills to give all team members an equal voice in the project. “With Experience First, you’re put with people you really don’t know, and you have to figure out [how to] build a relationship that works,” Becca says. She and her teammates started as acquaintances and ended as a unified, productive force. This mastery of cross-discipline collaboration spilled over into career success for Becca and Bryson. Becca,
now a high school P.E. teacher, must work with science faculty to align and document their departmental curriculums, even though their classroom activities and learning objectives differ. Bryson, meanwhile, puts his writing skills to work at Greenville-based Entertech Global, LLC. He collaborates with engineers to translate technical concepts into consumer-friendly terms. When it comes to marketing, his expertise complements theirs. A wide knowledge base in the liberal arts makes GU graduates effective at reaching across disciplines. Like Bryson, today’s graduates can say, “That’s where I come in.”
THE RECORD | SUMMER 2020
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