Last week, the Sellwood Bridge opened. The Sellwood Bridge has been under construction ever since I moved to Portland to start school. The old Sellwood Bridge was a narrow pathway high above the Willamette River that I crossed many times for tea and thai food. The new Sellwood Bridge is just like the old one, but newer and safer and wider and better. I will use the new Sellwood Bridge for many of the same reasons: for tea and thai food and $2 pints at a brewery called Thirteen Virtues.
Last Friday, we had a publishing party to celebrate the launch of this EA LLC blog you are reading right now! Faculty, staff, and students ventured across the bridge over the ravine to Tamarack, the lounge of the Forest residence halls, and we all enjoyed Bon catering, lively conversation, and a beautiful afternoon. The concept of a living learning community capitalizes on the intersection of living and learning. A college campus is a unique space where living and learning is integrated within the same facilities and conducted simultaneously by many of the same people. The LLC taps into that shared community and bridges the gap through specific programming and engagement across administration and faculty.
Perhaps part of the reason that the ENVS Department and the EA LLC have been able to form a natural connection (apart from the unbridled enthusiasm of the ENVS upperclass students) is that the ENVS curriculum itself is forged in connection. Environmental Studies at Lewis & Clark is an intensely interdisciplinary journey. Between breadth courses in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences and student-designed concentrations, the trajectory of each ENVS student is extraordinarily unique. It is up to each and every student to draw connections between disparate classes, majors, worldviews into the synergy of a capstone that will probably never be as settled as we wish it could be. Like many of my peers, this interdisciplinary intersectionality was perhaps the most attractive aspect of the ENVS major. As I explained in my post about passion, my passions lie in how and where things connect. It is the bridge I am compelled by, the methods and reasons of transport and crossover. While this certainly includes crossover, oftentimes these bridges become something else in themselves. Sam also writes about her passion for intersection itself, which makes me think that this might be a common denominator for liberal arts students studying the environment in a city called “Bridge Town.”
Since ENVS 160, I remember being thrilled when my classes intersected. The first time I felt that “aha!” moment of intersection between Environmental Studies and English was when we read Love Your Monsters and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was the extended metaphor. These connections excite me everyday. More recently, I discovered a connection between my contemporary dance class and the philosophy of science readings we are exploring in my Environmental Theory class regarding perceptions of gravity. Moments like these are when I am the most grateful and astonished that I am experiencing this liberal arts program. Here, I get to find and forge connections between basically whatever I want: my job and my major; William Faulkner and my geology class; my best friend’s research on India and my American history class; all of my homes, etc. To respond to Marlene’s meditation on fitting her interdisciplinary interests into an environmental studies program: YES! ENVS enables you to study so much what you love, especially if what you love is connections. I can guarantee that if you decide to major in Environmental Studies, there will be major bridge construction in your future!