Finding One’s Place in the World: Facing Grand Challenges

First Year Seminar 2015

Wittenberg’s Mission Statement

• Wittenberg University provides a liberal arts education dedicated to intellectual inquiry and wholeness of person within a diverse residential community. Reflecting its Lutheran heritage, Wittenberg challenges students to become responsible global citizens, to discover their callings, and to lead personal, professional, and civic lives of creativity, service, compassion, and integrity. 

• What responsibilities do you believe we have toward each other within our own diverse residential community?

• What does it mean to you to become a responsible global citizen?

Share your thoughts with someone near you and then discuss as a class.

Finding One’s Place in the World

• Goals for today’s discussion:-

– to consider our responsibilities as members of various local and global communities

– to increase our awareness of the impact of our choices and actions on those around us in the face of climate change

– to better understand the term “sustainability” and what it means in the Wittenberg context and beyond.

Climate Change

• Watch the following video clips: “CO2 in the Ice Core Record” and “It’s Us”

• http://earththeoperatorsmanual.com/main-video/earth-the-operators-manual

• How do we know climate change is caused by human activity? Discuss first with a partner and then with the class.

Sustainability

• In a world of limited resources and climate change, what does the term “sustainability” mean to you?

• Jot down your ideas,• Compare your ideas with another

student,• Share with the entire class.

Sustainability

• One of the most frequently cited definitions of sustainability is from “Our Common Future”*:

– meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

• How does this compare to your definition? Do you think in general that people are living sustainably?

*Our Common Future”, also known as the Brundtland Report, was published in 1987 by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development

Sustainability:meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their needs

• Sustainability is frequently divided into the 3 pillars you see on the left.

• Form 3 groups in your class and imagine you are decision makers for Wittenberg, Springfield, or the United Nations. Identify development goals or examples for ONE pillar given the challenges of climate change. These may be at the local and/or global level.

Sustainability:meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their needs

• Share your goals and examples for each pillar.

• Can you find overlaps between the 3 that fit the above definition of sustainability?

• Compare your results with examples from the EPA.

http://epa.gov/ncer/rfa/forms/sustainability_primer_v7.pdf

Sustainability:meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their needs

• What ways can you think of to live more sustainably while at Wittenberg?

• Can you come up with ways that intersect with the three pillars of sustainability?

How can we contribute through personal & collective action to a more sustainable planet in the face of global

climate change?