Date of Award
2015
Document Type
Honors Thesis (Open Access)
Department
Colby College. Education Program
Advisor(s)
Mark Tappan
Second Advisor
Tarja Raag
Abstract
The environmental crisis will affect all people, career paths, and academic disciplines. Acknowledging this, does higher education have an obligation to educate all students for environmental literacy (EL)? This study reviews literature on how to effectively assess and implement EL initiatives and highlights how other colleges successfully nurture EL in all students. This study also uses quantitative and qualitative survey measures to understand student levels of EL at Colby College and to highlight specific programming or curriculum that leads to high EL levels in students. Findings include significantly different EL scores between environmental studies student respondents and respondents in all other disciplines. A combination of findings from the literature, analyses of quantitative survey results, and qualitative student responses inform the suggestions for Colby College presented in this research.
Keywords
Environmental Literacy, Colby College, Environmental Education, Higher Education, Sustainability in High Education, Maine
Recommended Citation
Nash, Molly, "Nurturing Environmental Literacy at Colby College: Higher Education and the Environmental Crisis" (2015). Honors Theses. Paper 791.https://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/791
Copyright
Colby College theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed or downloaded from this site for the purposes of research and scholarship. Reproduction or distribution for commercial purposes is prohibited without written permission of the author.
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Curriculum and Social Inquiry Commons, Educational Leadership Commons, Environmental Education Commons, Higher Education Commons, Sustainability Commons