The Department of Communications and Journalism has recently added a new concentration called “environmental communication.” One of the core courses for the concentration is the Ecocultural Communication course, instructed by Tema Milstein, which synthesizes culture with communications with a focus on the environment.
Milstein said the environmental communication concentration is a direct response to a dramatic increase in student interest in studying environmental issues and understanding human relations with/in/as nature, specifically from a communications standpoint.
She said she chose the field for herself because ecological relations are the most all-encompassing, interconnected and pressing concern of our time.
The course is taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.
The motivation behind providing such courses, Milstein said, revolves around sustainability and passion for the ecosystem.
“For an ever increasing number of students, these types of courses provide a much-needed space in which to explore and question how and why we are in our current environmental quandaries,” Milstein said. “ And the course also provides a space in which to explore alternatives and to make interventions. They provide a space for vision, community, hope and action.”
The class is particularly interested in cultural discourses that might support more sustainable and restorative human-nature relations, she said. Critical and creative exploration as well as out-of-the-classroom experiences in the wider community are central to the learning experience.
“We look at human-nature relations as both actively socially constructed and deeply materially experienced, focusing on the global manifestations and reverberations of environmental communication and examining international, regional and local eco-discourses,” the course’s syllabus states.
The class also incorporates field studies. In the past, work outside the classroom has included visiting the Rio Grande BioPark, community gardens, the petroglyphs, prairie dog colonies, the Downtown Farmers’ Market and other locations, which change every semester.
“These field studies are intended to provide students with fresh reflexive experiential learning, using course concepts to see the familiar anew,” Milstein said.
The hopes behind this course for journalism and higher education at UNM in general is to develop moral characteristics in future leaders.
“The environmental communication BA concentration in CJ represents a greening of the academy that has been a long time coming,” Milstein said. “Its appeal is trans-disciplinary. Courses like these can help provide fundamentals for students to grow their own notions of an ecosocial moral character at a time when we need thoughtful leaders.”
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Milstein said students should focus on what they are passionate about when deliberating possible careers. While that may not be environmental communications, she said new paths in the field are opening up at an exponential rate.
“What is it that you want to change, buoy up, bring into being?” she said. “Stay focused on this, and a fulfilling career and life will unfold in front of you.
Denicia Aragon is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at news@dailylobo.com on Twitter @DailyLobo.
