LSE Course Descriptions

Click here for course offerings for 2011-2012 academic year.

ELP 550: Advanced Leadership for Sustainability (4)
This multi-media seminar course reviews, analyzes and critiques the history, politics and rhetoric of sustainability. A number of key themes related to leadership for sustainability are addressed: The history and meaning of sustainability; approaches to leadership and strategies and skills used by sustainability leaders; the effects of globalization on humans and ecology; whole systems thinking and design; and the role of eco-spiritual values and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in sustainability.  Inspiration is drawn from local, regional and global initiatives that are creating sustainable economies, systems, policies, and appropriate technologies. Through reading, discussion and experiential service learning, students will develop their own sustainability vision into action project.

ELP 548: Advanced Global Political Ecology (4)
In order to grasp the emerging discipline of political ecology, we discuss the following: the impact of a globalized economy on human and non-human communities; the relationship between poverty, global inequity and environmental degradation, the distribution of resource use and conflicts between the global North and global South, the ecological processes, earth democracy and the relationship of these issues in our personal lives. Students apply these concepts in real life through a multi-media study and presentation of a chosen commodity in terms of its production, distribution and consumption.

ELP 517/617: Ecological and Cultural Foundations of Learning (4)
This course explores how we teach and learn ecologically and what constitutes ecological and cultural ways of knowing. This course goes beyond simply justifying or advocating that our education should be grounded in ecological principles and explores how teaching and learning can be designed so that it critically questions cultural norms, is place-based, participatory, experiential, and transformational. Building on the work of numerous sustainability educators, this course engages in multi-sensory and interdisciplinary pedagogical inquiry. Students will create a teaching philosophy that reflects an understanding of ecological principles and sustainability pedagogy, and will demonstrate the design and implementation of an effective teaching experience.

ELP 516/616: Collaborative Ethnographic Research Methods (4)
Are there research methods that help us to gain knowledge, skills and worldviews that in turn help create a world that is livable, ecologically sustainable, socially just and bio-culturally diverse? This course introduces various approaches to sustainability education research including community-based research, participatory action research, case study research, ethnography, and feminist approaches to research. Students will create an initial research design for a thesis focused on sustainability education, and will produce a literature review to support this design.

ELP 503: LSE Thesis (4+)
Students work individually with their adviser to define, develop and present a thesis that demonstrates a satisfactory level of knowledge and skill related to sustainability education. The thesis is likely to require 4-6 quarters of work before the completion. Students need instructor's permission before enrolling in the course.

ELP 506: LSE COMPS Exam (4)
This course is designed to provide support to students completing their Comprehensive Examination (Paper). The Comprehensive Examination (Comps) is one of two options (the other is Thesis) required for completing the ELP Master’s degree. The four (4) credit ELP 506 Comps course is required for students electing the Comps option. This course will be offered to help students design, write, and present their Comprehensive Paper at the final meeting of the course. Students should have completed a minimum of 35 credits before enrolling in the course.

ELP 519: Sustainability Education (4)
In order to build a robust theory and practice of sustainability education, this course covers local, national and global innovations in light of the UN decade for Education for Sustainability (2005-15). While critically assessing earlier traditions such as nature education, environmental education, outdoor education, place-based education, and ecological literacy; students are involved in developing curriculum and teacher preparation modules for K-12, higher education and or community organizations.

ELP 501: Theory and Practice of Sustainability (1-4)
This course shows the application of theories and models in sustainability design, social justice, and bio-cultural diversity. Through hands-on workshops, personal stories, lectures, and discussion, students experience real life examples of how individuals and institutions have developed a vision and implemented that vision in various areas of sustainability including:  Education, Community Leadership and Governance, Food Systems and Policies, Indigenous Practices, and Appropriate Technology. Through group and individual reflection, students explore how they can integrate these experiences and perspectives into their own practice of sustainability education.

ELP 410/510: Permaculture and Whole Systems Design I (4)
Building on the work of permaculture co-originators Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, this course also looks at the more recent development of permaculture ideas. The course presents permaculture as an ethically based whole-systems design that uses concepts, principles, and methods derived from ecosystems, indigenous peoples, and other time-tested systems to create sustainable human settlements and institutions. This course will explore permaculture in-depth while also reviewing the evolution of whole-systems design, and the application of self-organization design.

ELP 410/510: Permaculture and Whole Systems Design II (4)
This course builds upon the knowledge gained in Part I of Permaculture and Whole Systems Design (required prerequisite), and explores in-depth:  Methods of whole systems design, advanced pattern literacy, biomimicry, appropriate technology, energy systems, land use philosophy and practice, and education and teaching methods in permaculture. Much of the course will be presented through experiential learning exercises, group discussion and projects, and hands-on activities. A portion of this course is dedicated to a final design project, in which student teams will create a permaculture design for a specific site.

ELP 410U/510: Spiritual Leadership (4)
This course focuses on various perspectives of religiousness and what is often called the spiritual. We discuss how such notions are integrated with the “whole of living” including what it means to be fully human. The topic of spiritual leadership is explored through such themes such as: identity, integrity, paradox, uncertainty, relationships, engagement, simplicity, and sustainability. A community-based field project complements readings and class discussions to give students an opportunity to examine leadership issues through the lens of spiritual discourse. All projects and readings are designed to create an open inquiry into the question “What is spiritual leadership?”

ELP 410/510: Nonviolence and Gandhi's Educational Philosophy (4)
This course has a two-fold goal: to study the principle of nonviolence as defined by Gandhi and to examine how this principle may be applied in our daily lives, including educational and other work settings. We will explore the links between nonviolence and Gandhi's notions of community, sarvodaya (welfare of all), anekantvada (belief in many doctrines), labor, self-sufficiency, advaita (non-dualism), enoughness, yajna (sacrifice), and non-exploitative modes of living proposed by Gandhi. Throughout the course, we will extract this connection as we examine his educational program of nai talim (new education). This course adopts a unique approach to practicing nonviolence and conflict resolution in education. Daily, educators are bombarded with "new" strategies for dealing with conflicts and challenges. While we will search for and develop specific practical approaches to dealing with these challenges, the participants will ask "broader" questions related to what it means to be nonviolent. We will consider the contemporary relevance of Gandhi's nonviolence as a way of living focusing on key facets of Gandhian theory and practice for ecological sustainability.

ELP 410/510: Learning Gardens and Sustainability Education (4)
By now, many of us are familiar with the themes of "sustainability" and "sustainability education;" in fact, living and studying in the Northwest, it would be most surprising if our psyche were not shaped by concerns about the environment. What is not clear is whether we, as educators, community organizers, designers, and activists, know precisely how to devise curriculum, teach, learn, or prepare educators and leaders who could create a world that is livable, ecologically sustainable, bio-culturally diverse, and socially just. As the field of sustainability education is new and wide-open, this course will use the Learning Gardens framework to break new grounds for sustainability education.

ELP 410/510: Garden-Based Education Research (4)
This is an on-line course. Students interested in doing a literature review of the research on Garden Based Education and synthesizing the research around themes such as: food and nutrition, academic performance, health, social development, motivation and engagement., etc., are encouraged to sign up for the course.

ELP 510: Urban Education Farm: Food Policy, Curriculum Design, and Action! (1-4)
This course offers a facilitated learning experience in the theory and practice of developing and implementing theoretically-based, behaviorally driven curriculum for garden-based learning experiences that are tied to the Oregon state benchmarks. This course also develops standardized menu of garden-based learning curriculum that has been pilot tested for teachers and garden coordinators to choose from the Learning Gardens Project and the needs of individual students.

ELP 410/510: LECL Naturalist Mentoring (2-4)
This course offers cutting-edge multi-sensory participation in our embodied ecosystems through which one learns the language of the more than human world by practicing arts, sciences, and crafts rooted in sustainable earth based cultures. Students are engaged in restoring the bond between people and the natural world in order to foster our sense of place and embrace this earth as our own home. This course returns to those hunting gathering roots of awareness and learning tested and refined through thousands of years of human survival.

ELP 510: Ecological Education in K-8 School (4)
Designed for the purpose of professional development for practicing K-12 principals and educators, this course researches principles of ecological education in K-8 schools through readings, class discussions, field study/observations, and curriculum development. In collaborative teams, participants revise, and revisit existing curriculum modules as well as develop curriculum to be used in K-12 classrooms.

Undergraduate Courses

ELP 450U: Introduction to Leadership for Sustainability (4)
This multi-media seminar course reviews, analyzes and critiques the history, politics and rhetoric of sustainability. Students are exposed to a variety of whole systems design in sustainability as well as examples from the grassroots including the growing conservation economy in the Pacific Northwest, and the issue of indigenous cultures and sustainability. Students apply these concepts in real life by developing a wildest dream project in sustainability and outlining social, natural and economic capital needed to implement it.

ELP 448U: Introduction to Global Political Ecology (4)
This course surveys a broad range of topics at the convergence of thinking about ecology and globalization. Students examine how the emergence of a global economy along with its technological, financial, and institutional developments has impacted life for both human and non-human communities. To apply these concepts and personalize the historical material, the focus is on various "commodities" with which we interact, such as salmon, tomatoes, and oil. As a foil to the global aspect, this course emphasizes the relocalization approach and examine ways in which local communities are generating alternatives to those aspects of globalization that are seen to be unjust, disempowering, and even eco-cidal.

ELP 410U: Gandhi, Zapata and Topics in New Agrarianism (4)
What is the role of food, land and agriculture in the imagination of an ecologically sustainable, socially just, and bio-culturally diverse future? This course examines the legacies Mahatma Gandhi and Emiliano Zapata might have for the emergent local food economy in North America and in individual student's bioregion. While firmly grounded in the farms and gardens in the Portland Metro area, students review local, bioregional and global trends in production, distribution and marketing of food, and develop comparative perspectives.