What would you do if the water coming out of your kitchen faucet could kill you?
You may never have given any thought to this question, but the freshmen in Dr. Alix Fink’s class have. And that’s not the only question focused on water and environmental justice issues that they have thought about and talked about this semester.
Fink teaches Environmental Justice: The Power—and Problems—of Water, one of many freshman-year Citizen 110 courses that are part of Longwood University’s innovative Civitae Core Curriculum.
Citizen 110 is focused on information literacy and critical thinking,” she said. “It’s about helping students learn to ask good questions and then look for information related to those questions.
Dr. Alix Fink, associate provost of research and academic initiatives and professor of biology Tweet This
Water is such a fascinating topic when we think about rights,” said Fink, associate provost of research and academic initiatives and professor of biology. “When I polled my freshmen about whether access to safe water is a basic human right, they all said yes. But is it? There are billions of people around the world who don’t have access to safe water. How do we ensure people have that basic human right?”
Thought-provoking questions are the stock-in-trade of faculty who teach these Citizen 110 classes, and Fink is a master.
Using water as an entry point to explore the broader topic of environmental justice, she has challenged her students to think about
- Why drinking water was contaminated with lead or cancer-causing chemicals in communities including Hinkley, California, Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey—and why no one did anything about it for so long
- The responsibilities of large corporations to make sure they’re not harming people who live in communities where they operate
- Why 70 percent of freshwater globally is used for agriculture when some people don’t have enough to drink
- What happens to electronic devices when we throw them away and what that means for the environment
- Why there so many more mosquitos—and fewer shade trees—in lower-income neighborhoods than in wealthier areas
I love that this course is positioned at the freshman level because it is helping students build that foundation they can take with them as they move on through their majors. These courses set students on a path of inquiry and thinking.
Dr. Alix Fink, associate provost of research and academic initiatives and professor of biology Tweet This
“Citizen 110 is focused on information literacy and critical thinking,” she said. “It’s about helping students learn to ask good questions and then look for information related to those questions.”
After gathering information through reading, research and watching relevant films and documentaries, students present their perspectives on the issues they’re studying, fulfilling another Citizen 110 objective of sharpening students’ public speaking skills.
“I love that this course is positioned at the freshman level because it is helping students build that foundation they can take with them as they move on through their majors. These courses set students on a path of inquiry and thinking,” said Fink. “I just love to teach freshmen. There is nothing better, and Citizen 110 is an opportunity to get them excited about such an important topic.”
Environmental Justice: The Power—and Problems—of Water is one of the courses under the umbrella of Citizen 110, taken by all freshmen as part of Longwood’s Civitae Core Curriculum. Taught from a variety of perspectives and a diverse range of disciplines, Citizen 110 encourages students to focus on the relationship between individual rights and responsibility to the common good while at the same time building skills in ethical reasoning, critical thinking and public speaking.
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