Grand Canyon Semester
The Power of Water
Dates: August 20 to December 8, 2012
The Grand Canyon Honors Semester (GCS), the third to be offered by the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) and Northern Arizona University (NAU), will investigate the role of water in shaping the landscape, cultures, and politics of the Grand Canyon region.
The Grand Canyon Semester is an integrated learning experience in the humanities and sciences. Students come to understand the environmental and social challenges confronting us in the 21st century through one of the earth’s most precious resources—water. Using an interdisciplinary approach, students experience water’s economic, political, artistic, ecological, social, and spiritual forces.
On backcountry field trips, in classrooms and art galleries, around campfires, in traditional hogans, and floating down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, we confront the 21st-century global challenges of managing water in these diverse natural and cultural landscapes.
- How can we protect this crown jewel of America's National Park system and still make it available to nearly five million visitors a year?
- What are the legal and moral rights of the Native peoples whose ancestors lived in this canyon country for thousands of years?
- How do water issues in the Grand Canyon inform broader global issues relating to policy, science, climate change, aesthetics, and social justice?
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The GCS offers a life-changing learning experience in the high mountains of northern Arizona and the deep canyon country of the Colorado Plateau.
< Image copyright Bruce Aiken