Students Teaching Students (STS) courses are taught by students in the Environmental Program nearly every year. Developed by two students at Williams College, STS/LEAD USA (Leadership Education and Development) was designed as a learning model intended to empower students. This model redefines the common, society-mandated concept of education as a one-way dynamic between lecturer and student, professor and professee. Students teach students, learning from each other's experience and open discussion.

With careful guidance by faculty, students—usually two together—design a syllabus and detailed teaching plan and present their ideas to the Program faculty for review. If their plan is approved as an ENVS 197 Student-Designed Course, they advertise it, launch it and work with a small class of students—usually 12 – 15. Often, but not always, the student who develop the courses do so as their ENVS 202 senior thesis/project.

The first STS course was called “Environmental Justice: Issues of Race, Class, Gender, Ethnicity and Environment” in 1993. Other STS courses taught have been:

• Living Self-Sufficiently
• Environmental Justice
• Biotechnology and Democracy
• Wilderness Education
• International Environmental Justice
• Ecopsychology
• Cultivating a Holistic Lifestyle
• Making Peace: Nonviolent Mindfulness and Conflict Resolution

STS Course Guidelines for Review and Approval


Current and Recent ENVS STS Courses

Spring 2012:
• Hunger, Leadership, and Social Change

Fall 2011:
• Gender, Power, Action
• Interntional Communities Activism

Spring 2011:
• Psychological and Indigenous Approaches to Environmental Learning

Spring 2010:
• Environmental Activism
• Ecological Tipping Points and World Systems Analysis
• Rethinking Education Paradigms

Spring 2009:
• Intentional Communities
• International Environmental Justice

Fall 2008:
• Cultivating Holistic Lifestyles: Mind, Body, Spirit and Environment

Spring 2008:
• Making Peace: Nonviolent Mindfulness and Conflict Resolution

Fall 2006:
• Food, Farms and Community
• Yogic Environmental Philosophy

Spring 2006:
• Ecopsychology

Spring 2005:
• Campus Sustainability
• Exploring Communities of Intent