Indiana State University & the Stewardship of Public Lands

This blog post includes excerpts from a recent Indiana State University news release. You’ll find the full release here: http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=4402.

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Ten years ago, John Conant, chair of the economics department and the course instructor, and former Indiana State biology department chair Charles Amlaner designed the summer Yellowstone experience after participating in the Stewardship of Public Lands Program as part of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ American Democracy Project, a program that teaches faculty how to promote good citizenship and advocacy.

“We decided we could take secondary teachers to look at the science, policymaking process and economic factors that lead to public policy,” Conant said. “We wanted to show them how to take passionately held beliefs and create policy.”

This year, instead of teachers, the course was geared toward currently enrolled Indiana State students, Conant said, “to let our students see that the issues in Yellowstone are not all black and white.”

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“I learned the importance of thoroughly examining an issue from all perspectives, and I realized how important it is to be politically involved,” she [Carter] said. “I really need to do a better job at paying attention to local politics – not just national politics. The best way to make change nationally is to start locally.”

It was an experience that put students at the center of Yellowstone’s “complex, interrelated system,” where [John] Conant said issues of wildlife, environment, politics and advocacy often come to a head.

“Yellowstone is an incredible, beautiful and fascinating lab in which everything clashes and you can see it all more clearly there,” he said. “The social science students can see how complex the science stuff is and a science student can see that it’s not just a research paper being published that gets things done, but it takes a whole process to make change happen.”

Read the full story here: http://www.indstate.edu/news/news.php?newsid=4402