M.S. Ecological Teaching and Learning

Offering program cohorts on both the east and west coast, this 32-credit master’s degree is intended for educators in schools, museums, nature centers, and alternative teaching settings who want to enhance their own ecological understanding and use their work sites and educational settings to apply their learning. The program brings education professionals from across the country and from many different disciplines together in learning communities to develop and deepen their abilities in integrating ecological concepts into the curriculum.

The program includes two field-study summers and three distance learning semesters. Summer field experiences are three weeks long and include living in a learning community while studying natural history and bioregional perspectives. The first summer field experience takes place in a remote, wild, and natural setting, focusing on learning the skills of bioregional education. The second summer field experience is held in an urban setting, allowing students to contrast their previous rural experience and develop an understanding of both natural and human-made environments. Fall and spring semesters are designed for educators to apply their learning. Participants design a practica that reflect their developing skills in ecology, advocacy, leadership and research, which are carried out during the school year at their own educational setting, while doing their coursework online with faculty and colleagues within the Ecological Teaching and Learning program. Each semester includes a one weekend face-to-face gathering. The program is approved for Elementary Science Professional Licensure in Massachusetts and may satisfy certification requirements in other states.

The first summer semester for the west coast cohort is June 27- July 17, 2009 in Port Angeles, WA at the Olympic Park Institute on beautiful Crescent Lake. The east coast cohort begins July 10- July 31, 2009 in Cobscook, Maine.

"Ecology is not a course, nor is it a program. It is the foundation of all courses, all programs, all professions. Such a statement can be made because ecology is a functioning cosmology, and cosmology deals with the ultimate self-referent mode of being, the universe itself. The ecology issue is not restricted to one course in education. It is the course, the curriculum, the structure of the entire educational program. It is the basis of medicine; it is the context for law. Ecology refers to the way the universe functions. The universe is the ultimate referent for every mode of being and every mode of activity in the universe. Cosmology is the unifying context and the ultimate referent for all human understanding. It is the entire sequence of education from kindergarten to professional school. It is the comprehensive context of phenomenal existence." Thomas Berry from Evening Thoughts