Over the past few years, various UConn organizations have been working toward convincing UConn officials to include an environmental literacy class as a general education requirement for graduation. On February 5th, the University Senate approved this motion and will continue to plan for long term considerations.
This proposal was originally formulated in 2016 by members from various environmental and public service groups on campus.
Myles Gibbs of ECOalition and USG claims that, “In America, there’s an entire political party that seems to deny climate change, simply because we don’t learn about it in schools. We’re not required to,” thus defining the purpose to make environmental literacy a graduation requirement.
Coordinators say that this general education requirement will not add more work to students’ course load and instead can be used to “double-dip” between different content areas.
Others cite the importance of this requirement, saying that conserving the environment is not limited to one focus of study, but rather impacts everyone and thus everyone should have some understanding of climate change and environmental issues.
Cover image courtesy of Chelsea Kurasz