College Of Natural Resources Participates In Global Seminar Course

BLACKSBURG, Apr. 28, 2003 -- The College of Natural Resources partnered with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to offer the first global interactive course for their majors this semester titled Global Seminar: Environment and Sustainable Systems.

The course is hosted by Cornell University with more that 40 universities worldwide participating. Virginia Tech students were specifically teamed up with students from NC State, China, Denmark, Austria, and India. Through satellite, personal videoconferencing, software, and telecommunications technologies, students were able to exchange ideas and perspectives on the course topics with an international community of students and faculty. The seminar used case studies from different parts of the world to bring issues regarding the environment and sustainable food systems alive.

Dean Sutphin brought this course to Virginia Tech when he took the position as associate dean for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the beginning of this year. Sutphin had participated with this course when he worked at Cornell University prior to coming back to Virginia Tech, his alma mater.

"The Global Seminar offers students the unique opportunity to interact with students around the globe to experience the dynamics of inter-relationships between food, population, the environment, and socio-economic development," says Sutphin.

The class is a combined undergraduate and graduate class offered jointly between the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and College of Natural Resources open to any student in the University. There were six students taking this class during this experimental semester with three on-campus instructors for this Global Seminar; Jim McKenna professor of crop soils environment science; Tom Hammet, professor of forest products; and Brian Murphy, professor of fisheries and wildlife science. The role of the professors in this course is to guide the students through the course.

"We hope to get more students from the College of Natural Resources involved in the future," says Murphy. "Students are not aware of this course and what it offers at this time."

Students meet in a classroom once a week, and then for their other class they communicate with their partner schools through an online chat. Senior crop soils and environmental science major Joanne Jenkins compares this chat to a talk on AOL Instant Messenger conversation.

Jenkins noted how this class gave her the opportunity to learn what is going on around the world. She said, "It was interesting to interact with other countries and learn their views on global environmental issues, and I would definitely recommend it to my peers."

This course will be offered again to Virginia Tech students in the spring 2004 semester. For more information on the Global Seminar course go to www.globalseminar.org or you may contact Dean Sutphin, Jim Mckenna, Brian Murphy or Tom Hammet.