AUDUBON EXPEDITION INSTITUTE
AT LESLEY UNIVERSITY

SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES SUMMER PROGRAM

May 30- June 19, 2008

The three week program is an integrated curriculum that includes two separate three-credit courses. Both courses must be taken simultaneously. This program integrates the theoretical study of Sustainable Practices and Voluntary Simplicity with the application of these practices.

Courses

• AENSC 2200 Exploring Ecologically Sustainable Practices (Natural Science and Ecology)
• AESSC 3300 The Practice of Developing a Voluntary Simplicity Ethic (Social Science)

Program Setting

The summer courses will be based at Ravenwood Collective in Searsmont, Maine. Ravenwood is home to a collective of people affiliated with AEI, a diversity of plants and animals, five acres of fields, a riparian corridor and mixed deciduous and coniferous forests. We share the land with 124 species (at last count), of resident and non-resident birds, a family of beaver, coyotes, mink, bobcat, and a variety of frogs, snakes, salamanders, and turtles. The peopled food-producing habitat includes: an organic bio-intensive vegetable growing system; a small orchard; a green manure field; a grape arbor; honeybee hives; and a variety of berry patches. Some of the implements of technology we utilize include: a composting toilet; a waste vegetable oil filtration system; a solar shower; facilities for 15 laying hens; a summer kitchen for food preparation; an almost completed straw-bale earth-sheltered solar building; a hand pump to acquire our water; an outdoor wood oven; and a few other efforts at living in a more sustainable fashion. The five members, three of which work for A.E.I., jointly own and steward the 156 acres of land that make up Ravenwood. We make our decisions using consensus and we have a strong dedication to the land where we reside. Ravenwood is at its beginning stages of development in relation to sustainable practices. There are many goals we have not yet accomplished in our quest to create a more sustainable farm; thus we hope you will be inspired to ask solid questions about how and why we could be doing a better job. We invite you to participate in helping to continue this ongoing self-critique and further creation of Ravenwood as a sustainable practices educational site. A key component of Ravenwood's mission is to utilize our land to do outreach through education. The summer courses you will be a part of are a manifestation of that aspiration.

A Note About Camping and Farming Experience

We will be sleeping out in tents all nights during the program and engaging in many farming projects, but please realize that it is ok if you have never camped in a tent or if Ravenwood will be your first exposure to growing food, building projects, or holding chickens. Our tents will keep you dry and keep the bugs at bay. This program is meant to provide a nurturing experience for beginners and for people who have experience with these skills. We will all teach and learn from one another in our quest to become more sustainable citizens on the planet.

Summer Program Intentions and Daily Simple Living

During the summer program there will be two overarching themes: Voluntary Simplicity and Sustainable Practices. You will realize a sense of place in yourself and with others while experimenting with how to live a more sustainable life. Students sleep outside in a tent every night; use a composting toilet; take solar heated showers; grow and harvest crops from the bio-intensive food growing system; learn the intricacies of attempting to live in a semi closed loop nutrient cycle; study or hide from the bugs in a solar straw-bale insulated building; and intimately live within the Thompson Book watershed. All meals are prepared by the student group. We shop for food at a local food coop and utilize some food that is stored over the winter from the last season's crops. We will all be challenged to practice sustainable living skills and explore our ethics in relation to how our on-the-ground practice matches up with our intellectual intentions. In addition to the cognitive and emotional challenges, be prepared to engage in experiential projects. Some of these projects may include: completing the construction of a second gray-water system; continuing to work on the straw-bale solar building; raising chickens; building a water collection cistern for your source of kitchen water; maintaining a composting system; creating a new garden plot; attempting to correct some erosion problems; and collecting waste vegetable oil to be processed for use in a diesel vehicle. All of our learning happens in the context of getting to know one another well and having fun while living together.

Summer Program Structure

The summer program is comprised of a 21-day field component and a non-field component of two weeks. The field component is made up of all the experiences, work projects, discussions, presentations, and community living that we do together in the field. There is a strong focus on building a close-knit learning community. The field component's 24/7 retreat style nature helps to nurture this aspect. We eat all meals together and are living and learning all of the time. Each day begins with a morning meeting. On some of the days the faculty will give an interactive talk about a related topic, but most of the learning occurs informally through projects and personal exploration and question asking. During the majority of the day we are engaged in hands-on projects related to sustainable practices and securing our daily living needs such as hand-pumping our water; cutting firewood; cooking our delicious meals; and caring for the garden and chickens. At the end of the day we have conversations, produce our own music, or go for walks together. The non-field component consists of the reading and writing projects one-week before and one-week following the field component. These times may vary depending on the rate at which you read and write. By concentrating the reading and writing into non-field time, we can more fully immerse ourselves within the experiential nature of the field component.

Skills and Inquiry Topics

• Passive solar design
• Introduction to keeping honey bees
• Photovoltaic panels for electricity
• Sustainable agriculture
• The perils of industrial agriculture
• Raising chickens for eggs
• Gathering ecological footprint data
• Basics of biologically active soil
• Root cellaring
• Energy conservation
• Overview of large-scale electric production
• Simple living skills
• Hand-grinding grain to make bread
• Baking in an outdoor wood oven
• Understanding embodied energy
• Cooking a nutritious diet
• Straw-bale building techniques
• Agricultural seed diversity
• Communication with resolve
• Collaborative learning
• Gray-water systems
• Alternative fuels for vehicles
• Basic carpentry skills
• Understanding rechargeable batteries

Ecological Footprint

During the summer program we engage with the exploration of our ecological footprint. We look at this the theory behind this concept while at the same time figuring out the actual numbers of our footprint related to specific areas of our lifestyle during our 3 weeks together. Visit http://www.rprogress.org/ for further learning about this topic.

For more information about the AEI's summer programs and to apply, please contact:

Paige Manning
Assistant Director Advising and Student Services
Audubon Expedition Institute at Lesley University
pmanning@lesley.edu
1-800-999-1959 ext 8489