Team-teaching

The best relationships of teacher and student are those that turn into friendships. In friendship the education machine is entirely circumvented and removed from consideration, and the two minds can meet freely and fully.The teacher ceases to function merely as a preceptor and becomes an example-an example of something, good or bad, that life has proved to be possible. —Wendell Berry, "Some Thoughts I Have in Mind When I Am Teaching"

Elise preparing for presentation at the Mid-America American Studies conference, April 2004

Campus Ecology was a student-faculty collaboration from start to finish. Both Jim Farrell and Elise Braaten ('04) had entertained the idea for years. Farrell regularly asked students to consider the environmental history of their campus in courses, and in the Introduction to American Studies he always asks students to write about "Habits of Our Hearts: A Day in the Life." In her first year, Braaten took a Farrell class on "The Culture of Nature" and posted this thought on WebCT:

A few people have commented on the fact that most St. Olaf students know nothing about our own campus ecology. As a liberal arts college, we have core courses that we are required to take. Why is it that there is no requirement of a course that relates to environmental issues and how we as people of a community need to be aware of creating an ecologically aware society? I think that if more students were educated in such issues there would be a lot of interest and enthusiasm, and students would want to get involved in making positive environmental choices

During her junior year, Elise decided make this her major. Creating an independent major in the Center for Integrative Studies, she called it "Wild and Precious Life: Educating for an Ethic of Sustainability," because-like Mary Oliver's poem "The Summer Day"-it offered her a chance to practice and peruse a vocation in environmental education. As she said in her proposal, "It connects nature and culture, thought and practice, realism and idealism, learning and teaching." [To see the web portfolio for Elise's major, click here.]

The Campus Ecology class was Elise's senior project. During Summer and Fall 2003, she read widely and drafted a syllabus for the course. With Jim Farrell, she revised it into a format they could teach collaboratively. And in Spring 2004, they taught it together. In the class, Elise was not a teaching assistant. She was a professor of her own knowledge and perspectives, her own exuberance and enthusiasms. Like Farrell, she taught individual classes. She read and evaluated papers. She advised students. And she modeled college teaching to other students who would also be teaching the class by their own participation.

In Campus Ecology, we discovered how valuable a student professor can be. Students liked the idea of a student professing. And they loved Elise's embodiment of that role. They loved her enthusiasm and engagement, and her sense of identification with them. They knew that she knew-better than Farrell-what it's like to be a student. And she was a wonderful role model of practical idealism, especially for the younger students. "When she gets excited," said one student, "I do too because I respect her hopes and dreams for the class and the school." The only difficulty with Elise was that she set a remarkably high standard for subsequent student professors.

Campus Ecology began as a collaboration of two friends, extended to a collaboration of students in the class, and then to students, staff and faculty in the St. Olaf community. It began as a topical seminar in American Studies, but Elise's class is now officially in the St. Olaf catalogue as Environmental Studies 222.