Bill Currie teaches the course “Sustainability Issues in the Great Lakes Region” (Environ 305) as part of the undergraduate Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan. This course was one of ten finalists for the Provost’s Teaching Innovation Prize in 2020.

This course uses a case-study approach. Students learn to examine complexities, tradeoffs, and joint goals and outcomes for sustainability issues using critical thinking and efforts to understand multiple perspectives.  Rather than learning general principles about a single discipline, the students and professor together undertake an in-depth analysis of a discrete number of specific cases that are chosen to represent the range of real-world ‘wicked’ environmental issues in the Great Lakes region.  Wicked issues are those that cross disciplines, cross cultures, cross ecosystems and scales, and that have multiple types of stakeholders that often do not agree on the definition of the problem.  Each case revolves around a real-world issue that involves tradeoffs and dilemmas related to a specific decision that either was made recently or that is being currently debated. Instruction draws from a range of disciplines and perspectives as needed to understand each case, including environmental sciences, economics, jobs, public policy and regulation at multiple levels of government, legal issues and the courts, political aspects, cultural aspects, and environmental justice considerations.

For each case study, Prof. Currie introduces the issue, leads interactive, critical-thinking exercises with the students, and brings in an expert guest speaker. Over the course of the term the students hear a variety of expert perspectives from scientists, environmental professionals and practitioners, and industry.

These are the scheduled guest speakers for fall 2020 and the case studies they address:

Jon Allan, Professor of Practice at UM: The Great Lakes Compact and diversion of water for the city of Waukesha, Wisconsin

Dave Allan, Professor Emeritus of Environment and Sustainability at UM: Lake Erie Harmful Algal Blooms

Mike Shriberg, Regional Director, National Wildlife Federation: Enbridge Line 5 and the proposed tunnel beneath the Mackinac Straits

Daniel Brown, Huron River Watershed Council: The debate to remove Argo Dam and restore the Huron River in Ann Arbor, MI

John DeCicco, Professor Emeritus, UM College of Engineering: Expansion of biofuels in the Great Lakes region

Jennifer Nutini, Chief Permitting Engineer at Eagle Mine, Lundin Mining: Metallic sulfide mining in the Great Lakes region

Karen Oberhauser, Arboretum Director, Professor of Entomology, and Aldo Leopold Professor of Restoration Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison: The Monarch butterfly decline

Kurt Kowalski, US Geological Survey: Invasive Phragmites, their management, and restoration in Great Lakes wetlands