College of Liberal Arts
Please direct all questions about the flag proposal process to the Center for the Skills & Experience Flags.
SOC 321K Environmental Justice and Health
Department of Sociology
Ethical Reasoning as Course Content: Courses that carry the Ethics Flag teach students to think ethically. Please describe course readings, assignments, and/or activities that require students to engage in ethical reasoning.
To explain why equity is a primary component of sustainability, the course will use the moral and ethical bases for evaluating sustainable policies or economic decision-making. Primarily using Ruggerio’s approach to moral reasoning and decision making, the course will allow students to identify the obligations, values, and consequences of social policy and decision-making, then apply those to the Principles of Sustainability put forth by several advocates for sustainability, including Randall Curren. In addition to using ethical reasoning to evaluate the current outcomes and possible policy solutions, students will be able to explain the ethics and principles of their sustainability service learning project (described below). The course is currently in development, and I am surveying textbooks with one criteria being discussions of ethical and moral issues related to place and health.
Ethics as an Explicit Component of the Course: The Ethics Flag indicates that students will learn practical ethics, so the connection between ethical content and real-life choices should be made concrete. Please describe how this course gives students the opportunity to apply ethical reasoning to issues relevant to their adult and professional lives.
Three essay assignments require the students to explain and illustrate the ethical reasons for building a more sustainable future, and specific to this course, ways to reduce pollution and environmental harms to lower income and minority populations. Students complete Service Learning projects with local NGO’s, and the final paper on their Service Learning project requires students to discuss which ethical criteria and sustainability principles their projects addressed. Thus each graded assignment in the course is focused on E/L of sustainability, and the required service learning allows students to directly work on sustainability projects (Leadership).
Graded Content Based on Ethical Reasoning: To satisfy the requirements of the Ethics Flag, at least one-third of the course grade must be based on work in practical ethics. Please describe the course grading scheme, indicating how one-third of the course is based on ethical reasoning.
All graded assignments require the students to explain and illustrate the ethical problems behind environmental injustice, race and class segregation, and negative health effects. More to the point, each requires students to explain the ethical reasoning behind the changes they suggest to our present system. This includes their reports on their service learning projects. 100% of the course grade includes E/L requirements.