Studying Sustainability

This year’s traditional coverage of Independent Studies focuses on students who researched environmental issues.

by Karol Crosbie

» James Witter: Survey validation for a declining amphibian, Blanchard’s cricket frog (Acris Crepitans Blanchardi), in western Ohio

» Sheldon Steiner: Is chytridiomycosis (Batrachochytrium Endrobatidis) present in declining populations of Blanchard’s cricket frog?

» Emily Irvine: Where have all the farmers gone? A study on the disappearance of small farms in Wayne County, Ohio

» Tim Lehmann: Pecking the eggshell at once from inside and out: Encountering self through nature in Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and the phenomenal experience

» Steven Schott: Civic capacity and regional sustainability

» Kalyn Kappelman: Environmental issues: Ethics or justice?

» Visit the Independent Study Database for more I.S. Titles from 2007

Independent Studies 2007 The questions are huge. What are we sustaining? For whom? For how long? At what cost? Measured by whose criteria?

A simple definition—and one that Steven Schott used in his study—is that a sustainable practice sustains the world’s demands today without compromising its needs tomorrow. Criteria used to measure sustainability have been compared to a three-legged stool. If one leg is missing, or if it is out of balance, the whole structure topples.

First, practices must be environmentally sound. They cannot deplete resources, including human and animal life, water, soil, energy, or air faster than they can be replenished. Biology students James Witter and Sheldon Steiner studied a vanishing frog species that may have fallen victim to practices that violate this principle. Steve Schott, political science, found that when city planners ignore this criteria, a whole city suffers.

Second, practices must be economically viable to sustain human life. The farmer who can no longer sustain his family by growing corn and soybeans on a 50-acre farm must try something different, discovered Emily Irvine, sociology.

Third, practices must be socially responsive. Kalyn Kappelman, philosophy, found that environmental policies that ignore lower-income people are not viable.

If one of the legs of the three-legged system is weak— if a practice is unhealthy, unprofitable, or unsatisfying— the quality of life, and sometimes life itself, is at risk.