Integrated Learning students present on food and hunger

In late November, students in a variety of disciplines presented projects that examined the issue of food and hunger from multiple perspectives. They came up with a variety of interesting and thoughtful takes on this difficult problem, including a mock proposal for a food bank, an exploration of the impacts of deforestation, addressing the politics of farm bills, and creating a lesson plan for elementary school students.

The projects are part of the college’s Integrative Learning program, which encourages students in areas such as English, Geography, English as a Second Language, Environmental Science and Sociology to study complex problems from a variety of perspectives.

According to Sociology instructor Greg Hinckley, “It does students a service by asking them to look at issues from their own discipline first, then have them reflect on the same issue by looking at it from different disciplines.”

Integrated Learning projects started ten years ago as an offshoot of the Coordinated Studies Program (CSP), which offer immersive courses on a single that incorporate coursework from multiple disciplines. Since some students cannot fit CSPs into their schedule, the idea of Integrated Learning projects was born.