A University of Minnesota, Morris liberal arts education is all about asking and answering the big questions.
The Morris campus is well suited to take the lead on these issues, says Chancellor Jacqueline Johnson. As a small residential campus of about 1,800, Morris serves as a model community, a laboratory for new ideas.
Opportunities for research, leadership, and advocacy help students at Morris connect their education with real-world problems.
Sustainability issues are broad and encompassing, making them a perfect fit for the liberal arts. Resolving these issues will require the skills and qualities fostered by liberal learning: critical thinking, problem solving, communication, a broad base of knowledge from many disciplines, as well as tolerance, imagination, creativity, and openness to new ideas.
And the liberal arts experience is itself renewable and sustainable, a foundation on which you can build upon for life. There’s no better preparation for active citizenship, leadership, and civic responsibility.
Sustainable learning and living at Morris
The Morris liberal arts experience offers students many ways to learn about and practice sustainability. Here are just a few examples:
- majors in environmental studies and environmental science;
- innovative courses, such as environmental political theory and creative writing about the environment, natural resource economics, and the chemistry of sustainable energy, and more;
- service–learning opportunities, such as surveying community residents on their environmental practices, prairie restoration, harvesting native prairie seeds, and interviewing and photographing local farmers;
- research opportunities in fields such as food production, biofuel crops, renewable energy economics, biomass gasification, solar energy production, prairie ecology, wind energy co-products, climate change and forest ecology, and many more;
- mentorships with prairie biologists, farmers, environmental activists, and local leaders;
- co-curricular opportunities such as Residential Life sustainability theme floor, local foods events, tree planting, recycling activities, organic gardening club, and renewable energy conferences;
- creative projects like costumes, sets, and props made from recycled materials in the theatre production of As You Like It, the annual Fashion Trashion show, in which students model clothing made from recycled “trash;” a student-produced video showcasing the University of Minnesota, Morris’s climate change commitments. Morris was one of only five institutions nationwide chosen for the film project.
