River as Field School
River Life is a strong conduit for University faculty who are interested in this “urban river field school” at the campus’ doorstep.
Faculty Idea Fair
February 22, 2013
We heard about research and teaching on the Mississippi River and what faculty colleagues throughout the University of Minnesota are doing, in a format that encouraged interaction and discussion.
Presentations were five minutes long, and gave a capsule vision of what river colleagues are doing, and each ended with a question or statement about what each presenter hoped to learn from/how or hoped to collaborate with other colleagues.
The afternoon concluded with small group sessions discussing research strategies, pedagogy, and next steps.
The presentations were wonderful and thought provoking, see more information, including videos of some of the presentations, at Faculty Idea Fair 2013.
Coursework
Courses that focus on the river are currently offered through CDES and the University Honors program, while others are in development all the time. It’s not necessary for a course to completely focus on the river, for the river to be a big part of the learning material. We can easily imagine how a course on the history of the Twin Cities could utilize river spaces around the campus as examples of key events, or the Mississippi River gorge just downstream being part of a floodplain forest course.
To learn more about how you can be a part of the River Life program contact Pat Nunnally at pdn@umn.edu.
Student Work
The examples on this page indicate something of the range of possibilities: an Honors thesis prepared by a student in Architecture, a course project prepared by a graduate student in Landscape Architecture, and a group project from an interdisciplinary Honors seminar. What all of these have in common is that they are, to one degree or another, community-focused and wherever possible are interdisciplinary in scope.
Projects on the Students and Community Partners pages also illustrate student work.