David Day and Ted Nguyen
Contributing Writers
The pen might be mightier than the sword, but for "Environmental English" students at the University of Houston, it's the sharp end of a shovel doing the most good.
Though "Environmental English" is not an actually listed in the catalog, there is a new sophomore English class, offered now for the second semester, designed to increase student awareness within the community. The official name of the class is English 2308 - Introduction to Literature; Non-Fiction Prose.
The course is part of a service learning program intended to provide students with the opportunity to develop their professional writing skills for the community.
Some of the students taking the course represent UH as volunteers with Trees for Houston during the spring planting drive. The group recently helped plant 27 live oaks at a federal housing project on the southeast side of Houston.
Emily Dominy, a 21-year-old HRM major and a student in this class, is unaccustomed to using a shovel.
"It's one thing to grow up hearing about conserving water or gas or turning off the lights behind you," she said. "But it's something else completely to turn up a hole of fresh dirt and plant a life-giving oak tree that will be here long after I'm gone."
Dominy was one of the students who helped plant the 27 trees at Wesley Square Apartments. The complex, located at Calhoun and the South Loop, is a low-income housing project that houses approximately 1,000 adults and 350 children.
Property manager Alice Adams infuses the complex with a sense of community. There is a Head Start program and a lively activity center, but federal funding is tight and money goes for essentials. The grounds are institutionally bleak, void of aesthetic amenities and would be completely treeless if not for the joint efforts of Trees for Houston, Chase Bank and the Wesley Square community.
Enes Redzic, a 19-year-old sophomore from Bosnia, said that the live oaks he helped plant will do more than give off oxygen and enhance the look of the apartments.
"One day they'll be home to squirrels and blue jays and little boys who will climb the branches," said Redzic.
Another group of students serve as volunteers for the Friends of Hermann Park, an organization working to improve the Bayou Parkland. Students Amy Moraques, Anthony Garcia and Ian Adams have spent the semester working on a guide depicting native plants on the trail for the annual Earth Day celebration's "Walk on the Wild Side."
Other projects connected with the course include public awareness efforts with the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center and with the Cockrell Butterfly Center.
According to a press release, the course is an excellent choice for those students who want their writing to be relevant to their professional development and to the community.
According to Dominy, it works.
"I got an overwhelming sense of satisfaction," she said. "It's education with the abstract removed. It's real. Real people. Real accomplishment."
Students and instructors of English 2308 said the course brings the real world to education.
Students in the class are required to set up meetings with the organizations to which they are assigned, to establish goals for their projects and to fulfill their commitments.
The students don't spend all their time out in the field, however. Classroom work is also required. The class portion involves analysis of environmental essays by writers including Eudora Welty, Henry David Thoreau and Alice Walker.
English 2308 will be offered in the 1998 fall semester.