As part of Dartmouth’s initiative to bring its world class education to a global audience, my adviser Dr. Andrew Friedland taught a 6 week course “Introduction to Environmental Science”. The course had over 9,000+ students enroll, and 3,000 students participate and 800 students complete it. I found it a great experience to connect with a global audience and have US students learn about the environmental issues of many different regions. Some memorable anecdotes for me were a student in Kazakhstan who harvested his own peat to heat his home, students in Bangladesh who had never heard of organic food, and a student in Malaysia who had to avoid fisherman who used banned products to keep the fish from spoiling fast. Overall, I read 1000+ posts and commented on 500 posts but was unable to connect with every student. It was a great medium to reach the masses but each student wanted to be heard and know that someone in Hanover,
New Hampshire was reading their post.
See the youtube clip of my soil pit excursion!