The Wolfson Debate Team proudly co-sponsors a celebration and recruitment event for the Earth Ethics Spring Speech Contest and other Speech-related activities.  An interactive activity (and snacks) prompts a personal examination of our campus community and local empowerment resources.  Using colored markers and pens, students are encouraged to draw symbols on large displays of bioregional and campus maps to mark significant places of environmental, educational, and community meaning.  Information on the Earth Ethics Spring Speech Contest, joining MDC Debate, and support offered by the Communication Arts Center will be available to students. 

Video Viewing (35 min.)

“Global Brain” by Peter Russell

A moving presentation which explores the theory that the Earth is an integrated, self-regulating living organism and asks what function humanity might have for this planetary being.  It suggests we stand at the threshold of a major leap in evolution, as significant as the emergence of life itself, and that it is only through such a shift in consciousness that we will be able to successfully manage the global crisis now facing us.

Group Discussion Questions

1)     What did the philosopher Alan Watts refer to when he coined the term “the skin encapsulated ego”? What are the environmental consequences of so many individuals having “skin encapsulated ego”?

Peter Russell

2)     What is the next great “Revolution” in society (after the Agricultural, Industrial, and Information Revolutions) and how will it differ from the Revolutions of the past?

3)     If an organism needs several billion atoms in order to function and if the evolution of consciousness needs several billion nerve cells to develop, then what will be needed for humanity to be linked into an integrated, functioning system?

4)     What are the benefits to the individual (as well as society as a whole” of having “leaky margins”?

5)     How can a time of crisis be such a wonderful time to be alive? How can we learn to appreciate times of crisis?

Supplemental Reading

“A Spirituality of Contentment” By Dee Dee Risher from the Other Side, Summer 1992

“Excerpts from Living Lightly in the City” By Janet Luhrs in Simple Living No. 1

“Beyond the Blue Glow: A Year Withot TV” By Lisa C. Lambert in The Oregonian 1999

“Can’t Live Without It” By Alan Thein Durning from World Watch, May/June 1993

“A Declaration of Sustainability” By Paul Hawken from the Utne Reader, Fall 1993

Discussion Questions

1)     What are you most attached to? Nice Houses? Nice clothes? Status? Financial Security? Independence? Privacy? Comfort? Has this attachment brought discontentment into your life?

2)     Risher claims that to choose a life of voluntary simplicity requires a radical break from our culture.  Do you agree?  Are you ready? Where will you find support?

3)     Durning says advertising images tend to project “sexual virility, eternal youth, social belonging, individual freedom, and existential fulfillment.”  Do you respond to any of these?

4)     Hawken’s says that in order to have a sustainable society, business and governance must be integrated with the natural world.  How does this vision relate to voluntary simplicity?
 

Local Harvest Day
MDC Kendall Campus
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
12 Noon

Produce from local organic farms will be on display and organic foods will be for sale
- taste the difference!

For More Information please contact
Annette Zimmerman Wells at awells@mdc.edu

Miriam MacGillis

From Stardust to
South Florida: 
Remembering Who We Are

Thursday, February 3rd,
11:15 am  - 12:10 pm
North Campus - MJ Taylor Lounge

Tuesday, February 8th,
9:50 am - 11:05 am
InterAmerican Campus - Room 401

Miriam Therese MacGillis
is a Catholic Dominican Sister and
Co-founder of Genesis Farm,
an Earth Literacy Center in
northwestern New Jersey.
Genesis Farm offers programs exploring
the Universe as a new transforming context for our lives and culture.
Sister Miriam is a founding member
of the Earth Ethics Institute.

This seminar is open to all who wish to attend

Please register with Janie Adams, 7-7119 or jadams1@mdc.edu

by February 1 if you are attending or bringing students.

You’re Invited to a Participatory Musical/Visual Event

Celebrating Our Land with Voice
Honoring the Endangered Species of
South Florida and Atlantic Waters

Featuring
Carolyn McDade
Songwriter/Activist 

Thursday, February 10, 2005
7 – 8:30 pm
Center Gallery
Refreshments Served

Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus
300 NE 2nd Avenue, Downtown Miami

Please RSVP by February 4, 2005
305-237-7119 or jadams1@mdc.edu
 

Ingrid Newkirk 
Cofounder and Director of
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Wednesday,
February 23rd, 2005 at 4:15 pm
MDC, Kendall Campus -Room 4203

Director of one of the largest animal rights organization in the world,  Ms. Newkirk has spoken internationally on animal rights issues, from the steps of the Canadian Parliament to the streets of New Delhi, India, where she spent her childhood. She is the author of several books including Save the Animals! 101 Easy Things You Can Do; and Free the Animals!, as well as numerous articles on the social implications of our treatment of animals in our homes, slaughterhouses, circuses, and laboratories. Her most recent book is Making Kind Choices: Everyday ways to enhance your life through Earth and Animal Friendly Living.  

Linda Gassenheimer 
Author and Miami Herald columnist

Wednesday,
March 2, 11 am - 1 pm
MDC, Wolfson Campus - Student Life Patio

Discusses

The Basics of Vegetarian Cooking

Including a presentation on
The New Food Pyramid 

Demonstration, Lecture, Lunch*

*Must attend lecture for ticket to lunch

Women’s History Month Celebrates

Anne Sullivan,
Everglades Poet-in-Residence

 And Invites You to a Screening of
The Everglades Past and Present
A Documentary about Marjory Stoneman Douglas’s efforts to preserve the Everglades

Friday, March 11, 2005
10 a.m. – 10:50 a.m.
Room 3208-09

Presented by
Florida Center for the Literary Arts
co-sponsored by Earth Ethics Institute

Women’s History Month Celebrates

Women's Bodies,Women's Wisdom
Lunch and Video Discussion and Get-Together for Women 

Wednesday, March 9, 2005
MDC Wolfson Campus, Room 2106
12 Noon - 1:30 pm
 
Enjoy a Delicious Lunch
Talk about Issues Concerning Active Women Today

The video we will look at is   The Mind Body Connection
 

Women’s History Month Celebrates
Women Protecting our Environment
 
Audrey Ordenes
Education Outreach,
South Florida Water Management

Jodi Mazer
Criminal Enforcement Council,
Environmental Protection Agency

Diane Patrick
Assistant U.S. Attorney
 
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
9:50 a.m. – 11:05 a.m.
Room 7128

Nature Informing Art: A Lecture by Susan Banks
Wednesday, April 4, 2005
Center Gallery 9 a.m. - 9:50 a.m.
MDC Wolfson, 3rd Floor

Susan Banks is an artist and professor at New World School of the Arts

Please RSVP - 305-237-3796

Earth Ethics Institute and the Environmental Center at
MDC Kendall Campus host High School Students for

Environmental Immersion Day

In Celebration of National Poetry Month In Anticipation of Earth Day

Poetry Inspired by Nature
co-sponsored by
Florida Center for the Literary Arts,
One Book One Community
Friday, April 8, 2005
Center Gallery 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.
MDC Wolfson, 3rd Floor

Students in English Composition classes Celebrate the Earth by reading and writing poems inspired by nature.

OF ABSENCE

I climb the mountain.

Up steps the moon has already taken.

Of absence. Of things broken.

To see if the moon is a mouth.

To see if I am what it wants.

     -Linda Gregg
 

EEI Challenge Grants
Award Celebration
MDC Wolfson Gallery
12 Noon- 1 p.m.

E-Fellows, Speech and Photography Challenge Grant Award Winners announced and certificates presented

Lunch Reception

Visions of Nature
Photography Exhibition
Best of Show by Zachary Randall
View Exhibition
 

2004-2005 Student Challenge Grant Winners

Spring Photography Challenge Grant
2005 WINNERS

Sustainable Interior Design Challenge
2004-2005 WINNERS

Sustainable Urban Design Challenge
2004-2005 WINNERS

Sustainable POD Design Challenge
2004-2005 WINNERS
 

Betsy Hilbert Writing Challenge
2004-2005 WINNER

EEI Speech Contest-Wolfson Campus  2004-2005 WINNERS

College Prep Writing Challenge
North Campus
2004-2005 WINNERS

In Anticipation of Earth Day

Michael Singer

Thursday, April 14, 2005 at 7 pm
MDC Wolfson Campus, Room 2106

A LECTURE ON SUSTAINABLE DESIGN

Michael Singer is the winner of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, his work opened new possibilities for outdoor and indoor sculpture, contributing to the definition of site specific art and the development of public places. His most recent work has been instrumental in transforming public art, architecture, landscape and planning projects into successful models for urban and ecological renewal.  In 1993, The New York Times chose Singer's design of a massive waste recycling and transfer station in Phoenix as one of the top eight design events of the year. Since that time, he has completed several innovative and inspiring projects.

Considering Sustainable Design

Fragments from "THE WALL"
A Learning Innovations
Golden Apple Grant Exhibition

March 2005

MDC Wolfson Campus
MDC Kendall Campus

Projects by MDC Architecture Students
under the direction of Professor Lyle Culver

    

View Projects