Warren Wilson's new environmental curriculum

You all know that I'm a Vandy grad (yes, yes, boo-hiss, where's my trust fund...), but before I fell into the VandyBubble, I was considering going to a small private school in North Carolina - Warren Wilson.

My parents went there and loved it. Sometimes, like when I'm in bumper-to-bumper traffic headed home from work, or when the sky is matte purple and not deep blue with stars because of all the sodium lights in the city, or when I think about what a lazy-butt I am, I wish I'd gone there too.

Warren Wilson is, period, end of story, AWESOME. Their little tagline says it all: "We're not for everyone... but then, maybe you're not everyone." Not only do you go to class, but you spend 15 hours a week on a work crew, and you do 100 hours of service over your 4 years there. It's in the middle of the Appalachian mountains in NC and it is so beautiful it will make you cry.

Obviously, it's a pretty hippy, granola, green place to be anyway, but they're worth mention here and now because, in October, they were awarded a $193,265 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations develop an environmental curriculum, Advancing Environmental Literacy.

Using the concept of "full cost accounting," the Advancing Environmental Literacy project will provide an opportunity for interdisciplinary study of the broad implications of critical environmental concerns. The goal is to better understand issues within a framework of sustainability - a "full cost accounting" that considers the environmental, economic and social/cultural impacts of realities and remedies.
- from the press release

I am so excited to hear more about this, because this topic has not yet been fully explored. We know now that scope is important, but we don't yet have an established framework through which businesses and governments can operate. It's not very effective to go to your local government and say, "Hey, this proposed housing development has broad-reaching implications on our quality of life! We should study this further!" but not have a way to actually, effectively study it and weigh the actual cost.

It's a bit out of our purview here in Nashvegas at the moment, but NC is close enough that this curriculum could spread here with a little push. After all, it was largely that Oil and Water class that got me thinking seriously about all of this stuff.