Rochester's rivers, lake, and waste: teaching local environmental history using water case studies

Kristina Chomiak; David Connell; Devin Cooley; Hannah Saxena; Sydney Van Winkle; Kaitlin Stack Whitney

doi:10.1007/s12685-020-00270-4

Rochester's rivers, lake, and waste: teaching local environmental history using water case studies

Water Hist. 2020;12(3):345-359. doi: 10.1007/s12685-020-00270-4. Epub 2020 Dec 10.

Authors

Kristina Chomiak¹, David Connell¹, Devin Cooley², Hannah Saxena¹, Sydney Van Winkle¹, Kaitlin Stack Whitney³

Affiliations

¹ Environmental Sciences Program, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, USA.
² Mechanical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, USA.
³ Science Technology & Society Department, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, USA.

Abstract

In a non-majors upper-level undergraduate environmental history course focused on the Laurentian Great Lakes, students researched and wrote micro-histories of the Rochester, NY area. Many were focused on water-quantity, quality, recreation, and pollution. This article briefly explains the approach and its potential applications to other interdisciplinary water courses. Then five of the original micro-water history cases are presented. It concludes with the lessons learned as a class and for teaching local water history in the future incorporating the previous class' findings.

Keywords: Case studies; Great lakes; Pedagogy; Pollution; Recreation.