Contemplative Sustainable Design
San Cristobal, New Mexico
Program Dates: July 29 - August 17, 2008
Program Director: Paul Wapner
Core Seminar: 3 credits
Independent Study (optional): 3 credits

Challenge your ideas about environmentalism and conservation in a non-traditional setting. While residing at a small, off-grid community, you will explore the theory behind sustainable design and put those theories into practice as you build straw-bale and straw-clay community structures.

This three-week seminar, hosted at the Lama Foundation in San Cristobal, New Mexico, will provide students the opportunity to live in a community in the mountains of northern New Mexico, participate in building sustainable structures, and explore the more contemplative dimensions of environmentalism. Students will examine the practical, political, technical, and economic facets of sustainable design as they erect structures utilizing passive and active solar energy. At the same time, students will reflect on their personal relationship with environmental politics and the quality of their commitment to sustainability. Through practices such as meditation, yoga, journal writing and artistic expression, students will examine their motivations, self-understandings and aesthetic sensibilities as they relate to environmentalism.

Students will also enjoy their natural surroundings in the Carson National Forest, as well as group experiences in sweat lodges, mountain hikes, and weekend trips to other parts of New Mexico.

One student who participated in the 2007 program wrote, “This was a great course… because our work/ experience was centered so much on participating in the activities rather than classroom/lectures. I appreciated the flexibility of the course to allow us to pursue our particular interests and to tailor our experience for the most personal gain. It is rare that a course lets you grow personally and spiritually as well as academically, and I think that is what makes this course most valuable… The guest teachers and off the mountain experiences also were very helpful… I think another thing that makes this course special is the relationship that you develop with your peers and teachers. The experiential learning emphasis of this course facilitates a closeness that the typical course does not.”

Prof. Paul Wapner is the Director of the Global Environmental Politics field at SIS. His research and teaching interests include global environmental politics, social movements, environmental thought, and international relations theory. His articles have appeared in World Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Global Environmental Politics, Alternatives, Global Governance, Environmental Politics, Tikkun, Chicago Journal of International Law, Politics and the Life Sciences, Dissent, and other venues. He is author of Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics, which won the Margaret and Harold Sprout Award, and co-editor (with Edwin Ruiz) of Principled World Politics: The Challenge of Normative International Relations. He holds a PhD from Princeton University.

Find out more about Contemplative Sustainable Design and apply to the program by downloading the program guide [pdf 431kb].