ENSC 162 (Honors) – Explorations in Environmental Science

ENSC 162 is the class that I chose to take to satisfy the Scientific Reasoning pillar of the Civitae Core Curriculum. This class was taught by Dr. William Collier. This course was “split-sectioned” with a general section of the course. The only differing factor between the two sections was the time of the labs. In this course, we did a basic overview of various topics in environmental science. For instance, we started by talking about the interdisciplinary nature (that is environmental science being able to be applied to various other sciences) and the basics of environmental science and worked our way towards our final topic of climate change. This class was organized according to our textbook, with a few topics/chapters being skipped for the sake of time.  The class was also heavily dependant on textbook reading that we were assigned before every class. The reading was generally used to introduce the topic of the day’s lecture and to ensure that we all did the reading, Dr. Collier assigned around one quiz per week that would cover the topics found in that class’s reading. We also had four non-cumulative tests over the course of the semester that would be used to assess our knowledge of large chunks of the textbook. The largest elements of this class were the labs and the semester-long projects that we were to submit. My section of ENSC 162 met every Friday at 9am for our lab. During our labs, we would do hands-on analysis/activities that could be related to the topics of our lectures. For example, we had a series of labs where we gathered leaf litter in order to analyze the species diversity of macroinvertebrates living within the leaf litter. This lab correlated directly with our lectures regarding biodiversity. I enjoyed going to our lab sessions because I am a very hands-on learner. I feel that I learn best when I am able to work with my hands and apply the concepts that we learned in the lecture to physical experiments.

After taking this class, I have a new perspective on the role of environmental science. Coming into this semester, I thought that environmental science was one specific branch of science, that was an entity all by itself. However, within the first week of class, this viewpoint changed. In reality, environmental science is an “umbrella field,” to which every other scientific field can contribute to. From environmental justice to the relatively new field of ecology, every branch of science has something that it can contribute to our understanding of the environment and its functions. In addition, I also gained a new perspective on long-distance learning. As we all know, this semester has been one that will not be forgotten anytime soon. After Longwood’s campus had shut down due to the pandemic, all of our professors had to think quickly about how to continue their classes under the new online format. ENSC 162 was one of the two classes that I had that continued synchronously schedule. The only real thing that changed after we were all sent home was the location of the lectures, all of the course content stayed the same and there were very few assignments that were changed. Personally, I preferred my classes to be synchronous because I felt that having to get up and plan my schedule around the classes kept me focused and gave me more motivation to work during the day instead of waiting until 10 o’clock at night to start on assignments. I also want to express my thanks to Dr. Collier and all the other professors that worked so hard to continue to educate us despite the massive global changes that we are all having to endure.

Linked above is the poster for my semester-long group project. At the beginning of the semester, we were divided into groups of two that would work together to perform a survey or experiment that we would later present at the Student Showcase for Research and Creative Inquiry. The final project was divided into several different parts, including the methods, poster, presentation, and report. The project methods was a lab project where we defined what we were going to do for our experiments and how we were going to do it. The poster was the actual creation of a poster that we would use to present our research or findings at the showcase. The presentation aspect was how well we actually presented our posters at the showcase. Finally, the report was a final paper that we were to write and submit at the end of finals week. Originally, my group was going to sample macroinvertebrates in the Appomattox River and analyze how stream health/distance from town affected biodiversity. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to change our topic to be more of a literary review of existing sources. We changed our topic to be a review of how the Clean Water Act has been deregulated under the current presidential administration. To do this, we scoured the internet for both popular press articles and scholarly sources and synthesized all of the information in order to present both sides of an argument in our presentation. In our poster, we tried to remain neutral and just provide facts for the readers to use in order to formulate their own opinions. The two sides of our argument were those who supported the deregulation of the Clean Water Act and those who opposed it. I actually really enjoyed this assignment because it allowed me to research a topic that I knew nothing about beforehand. I feel that this assignment, and this course as a whole, has helped to mold me as a well-rounded scholar instead of a scholar that is just focused in one field or one aspect of scholarship. Also, due to the pandemic, I feel that this whole assignment can show how our class was able to persevere and still provide solid research and thoughtful insight while facing something that no one has ever seen before. Also, I am greatly appreciative of those who helped to put the showcase online. It was quite different than what I expected a the beginning of the semester, but I am very grateful for the opportunity to present our group’s research, instead of it just being used to write a paper. By presenting our findings and interacting with others during the online showcase, I felt like our research could be put to good use and that it ould help others that may be on the fence to formulate their own educated opinion on the topic.