In spring 2024, students from ENVS 160 (Introduction to Environmental Studies) at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon explored the “Many Care, Just Differently” EcoTypes theme via in-person community interactions. They met members of three communities: the First A.M.E. Zion congregation, the oldest Black congregation in Oregon; Young Farmers & Ranchers of the Oregon Farm Bureau, and unhoused vendors of Portland’s Street Roots newspaper. Please visit these links for a more in-depth summary of each community interaction.
Each interaction launched with an in-class panel, then a subset of students traveled to meet each community in their own settings. Following introductions, students administered a brief, interactive EcoTypes theme survey. In addition to the important conversations their surveys generated, and personal experiences they later chronicled, students compared summary survey results for the three communities, alongside their own brief survey results. This comparison is presented below.
Thank you again to these communities for your generosity, and for all our students learned from you!
Themes
Here are tabular results from the brief theme survey, rounded to the nearest tenth given the low sample size (n = 6-11) for our three interaction communities. Below are averages ranging from -1 (left theme attractor) to +1 (right theme attractor).
| Community | Place | Knowledge | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| First A.M.E. Zion | -0.3 | (0.0) | -0.4 |
| Oregon Farm Bureau | +0.2 | (0.0) | -0.4 |
| Street Roots | -0.2 | -0.6 | (0.0) |
| ENVS 160 Sp24 | -0.3 | (0.0) | +0.1 |
Below is a graphical depiction of the theme survey results above, with the same -1 to +1 range. As is evident in these tabular and graphical summaries, student results were at times similar to communities—e.g., a preference for nonhuman Place among students and First A.M.E. Zion members—and at other times were quite different, as in their Place results relative to Oregon Farm Bureau, or their mix of old/new Knowledge relative to Street Roots. Indeed, surprising similarities and important differences were a theme in many of their conversations.
EcoTypes
Below is a graphical comparison of the four main EcoTypes Place/Knowledge types for the three communities and ENVS 160 Sp24 students. For some indication of Action suffixes, please see the overall Action theme results above. Here too, interesting similarities (e.g., Ecoscience among students and First A.M.E. members) and differences (e.g., a strong Traditional Ways proportion among Street Roots, but none among students) emerged.
SDGs
Finally, here is a tabular comparison of the percentage of SDG priorities among the top four of each respondent, for each community and our ENVS 160 Sp24 students. Students had an opportunity to consider, for instance, how their top priority of climate action was not necessarily shared among these communities, and how others (e.g., clean water/sanitation) were far more important. These differing SDG results may offer the most concrete evidence that, indeed, many care, just differently.
