Environmental Ethics
In my environmental ethics course I tend to focus on the particular problem of moral status, explicitly looking at different accounts of who or what matters morally and why. Environmental and animal ethics have typically challenged more traditional ratiocentric or anthropocentric accounts of moral mattering, and so focusing on the variety of alternatives put forth in the literature makes for a convenient framing for the course. We typically do a crash course on ethical theories before I lead a “Last Man Scenario” activity that allows students to clarify their own views in discussion with one another and a series of thought experiments before we dive into the more difficult philosophical material
I like to teach environmental ethics with a scaffolded research paper as a major assignment, so each student submits a topic proposal, annotated bibliography, paper outline, rough draft for peer review, and a final draft of their paper.
Since we wind up reading a variety of papers and book chapters from several different authors, I’ve been using reflection journals for this course, requiring students to have a reflection written for each class. Students then discuss the reading in small groups with reference to their journal entries. Student input – their questions, what they agreed with, and what they disagreed with – then lead class discussion for the day.
Sample Syllabi
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Spring 2015
The official title of this course is “Philosophy and Public Affairs.” At Western Michigan University, it served as an applied ethics course of sorts wherein instructors could teach on a particular topic of their choosing. I decided to teach an environmental ethics course and, since it was an upper-level philosophy course, I ran each class more seminar/discussion style. The class was fantastic and teaching in my specialty early in my career was extremely rewarding.
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Winter 2023
This was my first Environmental Ethics course at Northland College. The course had no associated textbook, so readings were collected in a course packet. The primary driving question was that of moral status, and this course highlighted the historical disputes between environmental and animal ethics. This course also experimented with using a scaffolded writing assignment structure for their final research papers.
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Winter 2024
In this iteration of the course I experimented with adding the reflection journals to the course structure to help guide classroom discussion. I was impressed with the depth of discussion that accompanied the integration of the journals with the readings. Students, having to write more often for the class through their journals, along with the increased focus on in-depth discussion of the ideas presented in the course with their peers, appeared to better grasp the material.
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Winter 2025
This iteration of the course altered the collection process for the journals to make it more convenient, as well as further specified the instructions included with the journals. I also mentored an undergraduate teaching assistant for this course.