Newsletter

Winter 2000: New Course Offerings

New Course Answers the Question: What Can We Do?
By Steven Byler and Sheilagh Byler

How can we live out our environmental stewardship ethic? This is a question that many of us wrestle with.

Au Sable-Pacific Rim is offering a new course - Stewardship Praxis (EnvSt/Biol/Int 353) - that will teach students how to apply environmental stewardship in practical and meaningful ways.

Praxis involves the practical aspects of how we make environmental stewardship real in our lives. As we develop our understanding of science (how the world works) and ethics (what ought to be), praxis is the working-out of our inevitable question, "What then can we do?"

The Stewardship Praxis course will be offered in both January and May. The May term will be a regular Au Sable three-week session, but for January we are trying something new. The January course can be taken for 2 or 3 credits: the two credit option will run for 8 class days from Dec 29 through Jan 6, with the third credit earned by staying an extra week and completing an additional project.

The course will consist of intensive lecture, discussion, readings and journal-writing integrated with field trips and hands-on projects. Hands-on projects will be completed on specific projects including food and gardening, alternative building techniques, and appropriate technologies for living in-place.

Emphasis will be placed on working through practical solutions for difficult problems and issues. Students will cultivate skills for inter-relating scientific and ethical principles, and will learn how to practice environmental stewardship - both in their own culture and in development contexts. The course will integrate social and cultural aspects of stewardship, and will stress that community is central to stewardship living. The goal of the course is to show students how to make lifestyle decisions that will enable them to live within Creation, as Stewards.

The course instructors will be Job Ebenezer, Steve Byler, and Sheilagh Byler.

Job Ebenezer works for the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) as the director of environmental stewardship and hunger education and is a member of the Au Sable Board of Trustees. He has done significant work in urban and overseas development stewardship applications.

Steve and Sheilagh Byler are the Stewards at the Smith Prairie Campus. They hold MS degrees and have experience in practical applications of stewardship, both here and overseas.

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