DENISON UNIVERSITY PRACTICUM SEMINAR

The Junior Practicum is a required class for Denison’s Environmental Studies major.  Students gather together to work as a consulting team on a real-world project and learn about how the theories of their environmental curriculum operate in the world at large.  Every semester the class takes on a different topic with a different client.   In Fall, 2019, Dr. Abram Kaplan coordinated with officials at Meritor, Inc., and the City of Heath to explore sustainable redevelopment options for the 79-acre site.  The class of ten students came up with a series of blue-sky ideas about how to reimagine the property, and presented those ideas early in the term to T&M Associates, the engineering firm responsible for site management in consultation with Meritor.  Subsequently, the class shared these ideas with Heath’s Mayor Johns, and he encouraged them to expand their investigations further.  Through discussions with officials at the Ohio Historical Connection, GROW Licking County, the City of Newark, and other local stakeholders, the class developed a more formalized proposal which was presented publicly in November, 2019 (and is included in this website).  Finally, each student took on a particular topic of personal interest, and after the term ended, one of the students, Libby Dickerson, took on the responsibility of constructing this website so that the entire semester’s work could be available broadly.