Oral History

In summary, the transcription is an interview with Professor Joe Underhill, the chair of the Environmental Studies program at Augsburg College. He discusses how his childhood experiences, such as growing up on a farm and attending an outdoor school, shaped his interest in the environment. He also talks about his career path, from initially wanting to study marine science to eventually focusing on political and social aspects of environmental issues. He explains how he ended up teaching at Augsburg and his motivation for creating the Environmental Studies program. Okay, so today's April 3rd of 2024. I'm the interviewer Marie Fenberg. This oral history is taking place in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the campus of Augsburg in Memorial Hall. The following interview is conducted with Professor Joe Underhill on behalf of the Augsburg Archives for the Augsburg Oral History Project. Professor Joe Underhill is the chair of the Environmental Studies program here at Augsburg and the creator of the River Semester, along with many other amazing environmental projects at Augsburg over the years. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. Okay, so I can just start kind of at your upbringing. So my first question is what experiences from your childhood have shaped who you are today? Well, when I was in between first and second grade, my family moved from Brooklyn, New York, up to upstate out into the country onto a farm, an old farm with 100 acres of land. And so I had a chance when I was growing up to spend a lot of time outdoors, sort of playing around outside exploring. And I wasn't necessarily like a big camper, but we just naturally spent a lot of time outside and my mom in particular was kind of into that and we would do a lot of activities out there. We did tree planting. One summer I remember we made a wigwam up in the woods. We'd swim in the pond, we'd play in the stream, that kind of stuff. So there was just a lot of time outdoors. And then when I was in high school, early high school, my older sister got really into outdoor stuff and she went to initially to the outbound school in Maine. And we went and visited her there. And while we were there, I thought, oh, this is amazing. This seems really cool. And I'm not sure what drew me to it, but I just, it just seemed, I was intrigued. It seemed challenging. There was a community there. And so that, I then the next year went and took the course outbound and you spend about a month off the coast of Maine there. And I learned sailing there and outdoor survival and rock climbing and it's very physically demanding. And I just loved that. And that was kind of the thing that really sort of was the springboard that got me involved in outdoor environmental stuff. So, yeah, those were two at least. Yeah. So what were your kind of original thoughts on your career path before you came to Augsburg? Because I know you've got your bachelor's from the University of California, your master's degree from San Francisco and your PhD. From University of Michigan, yeah. Yeah, well, I, by the time I started looking at colleges, the first school I went to was actually, I didn't, I went to school out on Long Island called Southampton College. And I went there specifically because they sent me a brochure that had a picture of a big sailboat on it. And I was like, okay, sign me up. Because I, at that point, after going to outward bound, I had worked on some big sailboats, this boat on the Hudson River called the Clearwater. And that, again, it just kind of increased my interest in boats and marine things. And so I was thinking about marine science, you know, sort of like marine biology or something like that. So I went to this school on Long Island. And I spent just three semesters there and, you know, was starting to pursue interest in natural sciences, was taking, you know, basic, you know, sort of intro classes. But was working down at the boat shop. There was a boat shop, boat yard there, and I took actually a boat building class off campus. So I was much more interested in the boat side of it than the science side. I mean, I like the science side. But, and then I did the, in my third semester, I took this thing called the semester, the C semester or C-mester it was called. And that was, we ended up sailing on a schooner, a 105 foot schooner, big sailboat down the East Coast. And taking a mix of history and ecology, I took a coastal ecology class and a navigation seamanship and a literature class, reading Melville and Conrad and stuff like that. And that was great. That was like, you know, you could see that there's a direct line from that experience to the river semester, you know. So that was an experience that I just loved. It was so completely engaging and exciting and adventurous. And you're just learning all the time in this wonderful community of the boat. And it just kind of, it was a highlight of my undergrad education for sure. So, but once I'd gotten through that, I didn't want to go, at that point, I'd begun to kind of broaden my horizons. And I wanted to go to a more challenging school and kind of had this idea of going out to California. So I then sort of switched gears a little bit and applied to Berkeley and got in there and moved out to California. Actually biked across the country to get there. So that was kind of part of where I was at, at that point, was I wasn't going to fly out there. I'm going to ride my bicycle. I spent four months going all the way around North America and ended up in San Francisco. And ended up then getting much more interested in politics once I got out to Berkeley. So I got initially very involved with issues around nuclear, the nuclear arms race, which was in the 80s, was a, was quite a, I mean, it continues to this day to be incredibly frightening. You know, sort of apocalyptic dimension to our lives on this planet. And so I ended up focusing my undergraduate work on trying to understand this problem of nuclear weapons and the arms race and, and this, and kind of the ways in which technology can get out of hand. And humans are very good at inventing things, you know, but not very good at somehow, you know, using them for productive ends. So, you know, so just it, that kind of got me interested in really more of the human dimensions of these issues. How do humans make decisions? What's the, that political, social side of it? And that took me away from marine science and that side into this very political and then eventually kind of focusing on military issues and international relations. And so, so yeah, I went from a sailboat to looking at the arms race and arms control to then studying sort of the politics and culture and psychology of U.S. foreign policy in my graduate program. So I did a lot of really kind of tangentially related to environmental studies at that point. Still I was interested in how humans could do beneficial things or humans could do incredibly destructive things and trying to understand how we, you know, avoid some of this more destructive outcomes of what, what we do as a species. So once I landed at Augsburg, after I graduated, I was teaching international relations and political science. But then just being by the Mississippi River and having it, being at a small liberal arts school, you kind of, you, you don't be, you tend not to be so much of a specialist here, but more of a generalist because you have to teach lots of different kinds of things. And it was at that point that I began thinking about environmental issues more and all of that, but maybe that's another question. Yeah. So what led you to come to Augsburg and teach here? Well, I graduated in 95, I think, from Michigan. I don't have it on here. Okay. All right. Confirmed. Yes. 95. And I applied for jobs all over the country. I sent out dozens and dozens of applications and initially I got, the only job I got was in North Dakota in Minot State. So I worked for two years in Minot, North Dakota, which was wonderful in ways, but maybe not ideal in many for quite remote and fairly small town. And so I kept looking around. It was also the department wasn't a great fit. And I, you know, it was just one of the many jobs that came up. I had not heard about Augsburg before, but I loved the twin, the Twin Cities seemed like a cool place to be. And I came and interviewed and it was a good fit and I got the job. So it wasn't a particular, like I didn't come looking for this, but for academic jobs, it's often, it's a very competitive, you know, so there's often not a lot of choice. If you've got a job somewhere, you're going to take it. So that was the case with this for me. But I found it to be a really, you know, a good fit once, once I got here and I found that it somehow all seemed to work out well, that there wasn't, it wasn't an accident. It seemed that I had been hired here, but the kind of teaching I like doing and kind of approach to sort of social justice issues, this sort of ethical component, I would say, that was part of what Augsburg does a lot of and part of what I've been doing and just seemed like a good fit. So, so yeah, I didn't come here because of the Mississippi River. It wasn't like I had said I want to teach on Mississippi. It just happened that this is where I landed. And then once I got here and realized, you know, like, it was just a few blocks away. And here was this great, you know, amazing natural feature, this body of water with amazing national and international significance. It seemed like we should do something on it. So, so yeah. Yeah, but coming to Augsburg was, again, not something I had anticipated or expected, but it's where I landed. So obviously you created the environmental studies program where we're instrumental in helping create it. Part of it, yeah. Part of the team. So what kind of helped motivate you to do that besides being close to Mississippi and being interested in sailing? Yeah, in terms of creating the program in environmental studies, I think it was, I initially got involved with the campus environment was initially called the Environmental Concerns Committee, the ECC. We were concerned. Yes. And I, you know, I just always had been interested and concerned about what was happening in the environment, all the destruction that had happened and was ongoing and feeling like we should do something about it. And I was, I've always been very interested in not just studying things, but doing things about the world. Right. So in ways I've always been a little uncomfortable in academia, because academia is often kind of isolated. And it's supposed to just be about you study things and you keep your distance and it's more theoretical or, you know, you're in the lab or you're in the classroom. And, and I've just always had this kind of tendency to, if there's a problem, I want to do something about it. And so this was a way to do something was to both be on that committee. And then once you're on that committee, you're trying to do stuff. It's a natural that you also want to have some courses related to that. And we had no environmental studies at that point. So I'd say it was really, you know, just the felt need to respond to the environmental crisis that really motivated that, you know, climate change was coming on the scene as a bigger issue. And I mean, there was just no, and I, you know, and some of my earliest work had been with environmental activism, like on the Hudson River. So this boat, the Clearwater that I mentioned was an environmental education and environmental activism initiative that was started by Pete Seeger, a folk singer. And that, that part of my background definitely also kind of informed and inspired this interest in getting the environmental studies going. And then by extension, doing the class on the river. Hi. Yes. Can you pause that for just a sec? Let me, let me just start it again. Okay, good. Okay. So, so we were talking about the creation of the environmental studies program. And so the first step for that was, was creating. So it was on this committee, we're starting to think about ways to expand it. And then I started a new course called the environmental and river politics class. And that was in, I think that was first offered in like 2000. Maybe winter. We had this back then we had a G term or an interim term where you could offer these kind of experimental classes. So that was kind of the first class. And that seemed to go pretty well. There was some interest and people, you know, students were signing up. And then we began meeting with Professor Lansing and Professor Erickson and social work. So sort of the three of us began kind of exploring this idea of creating enough courses and developing a major that we could do that. We first started by thinking about a minor. That was just having an environmental studies minor. And then we decided no we wanted to just go kind of go for it and make a major instead. So we spent about a year or so I don't remember exactly how long, developing that proposal, coming up with a list of courses, and that included Professor Lansing's environmental history that he developed. Professor Erickson had a environmental justice course. I had this river politics and then we developed the new introduction to environmental studies called environmental connections. So that was kind of the one, one of the first new classes we developed for that, for the program. And then between that and a few others, we eventually got an environmental economics class, where obviously we're working with biology and chemistry to get those. And so that together was enough to, to have the core of the, of the program. And we got it approved by the academic affairs committee, and we're off and running and then it was just a matter of beginning to recruit students and, and eventually got to a point where we were able to hire our first halftime person that was Emily Schilling, who came on as half environmental studies half biology. So after that, then we've had some, you know, we've had some setbacks. So we kind of are having to regroup a bit as are so many people in the wake of the last say five years where there's just been many challenges. So, did that give you enough on the sort of origins of the program or whatever? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, how did the university first react to you guys wanting to start that program? Like what were their environmental policies at the time environmental thoughts? Yeah, I think they were there. The Dean at that point was Barbara Farley was her name, was generally supportive, or I think in, in general, people on campus saw the environmental issues as important. They understood that there was, this was a kind of growing field or that this would be a something that we could offer to new students would help to bring in more students to Augsburg. So there was not a lot of pushback. And initially, we are actually able to offer a number of team taught courses like this environmental, the EMB 100 class was initially taught by two faculty. And which is expensive, right? You have to pay two faculty to teach one class. And so that was something the university was willing to invest in, right, to basically pay extra for that. And that was, you know, that was a sign that they were supportive of it, right, that they were willing to pay that. Since then, after, I don't know, maybe 10 years or so, eventually that morphed into now a class that's just taught by one person, you know, for instance, and there's, you know, we and they did eventually write support hiring Emily Schilling, that was, again, an investment by the college or university in that. So, so yeah, I think, I think there was, there was not a lot of resistance. When it came to doing campus greening more broadly, where we might have had to spend more money, say to put solar panels on a roof or something, we generally found that there just wasn't enough funds available to do that. I don't think anybody really opposed it, but it was just like we didn't have the extra $3 million or something to pay for that. We did, you know, the new science building, the Hackford Center was, has a lot of green design in it, it's LEED certified at the gold level and so on. And President Pribbenow has been, is very much an environmentalist and supports that work and has been able to support it financially to the extent that he can and push for that with the building. So it generally hasn't been, it's been a supportive place to pursue these. It just, compared to some other schools that are just wealthier schools that have bigger budgets, we've had to, we've had to sort of be limited within our means by that. And that's meant that we, you know, there are other schools in the area who have much larger budgets and have more staff and have all sorts of amazing programs and facilities that we just don't have. And not for lack of wanting to, it's just we don't have the resources to do it. So, yeah. But I'd say the biggest obstacle really in the ongoing sort of thriving or working of the Environmental Studies program has been it's hard to get all the faculty to collaborate together because they're all in different departments. And so they have, Environmental Studies is often seen as kind of a sideline, right? Their main affiliation obligations are to their own department and then they kind of squeeze in a little extra on the side for Environmental Studies. So not having a department, right? We just have a program which kind of borrows faculty from other departments has been a limitation. And other schools have Environmental Studies departments and they have faculty who are just Environmental Studies. That's it. So that's been, I would say, kind of one of the areas we've bumped up against and just makes it hard to coordinate action and get people investing time and effort into building the program and because they're just always have this other set of obligations. And, you know, we've, if we have, you know, enough students, everything at a school like Augsburg is driven by enrollments. And so if you have, if we had 100 majors, we would, you know, that would, we'd have to become a department because we would need more faculty and all that. I think we've, at most, have had something like maybe 40, maybe 50 majors at one point spread out over the four years. It's dropped since then. So the other challenge is just, you know, growing the enrollment in the programs. And so it's a little bit of a, you know, horse and cart kind of thing. You know, you need the faculty to recruit the students, you need the students to recruit the faculty. And so we're working on trying to do that. Augsburg is not kind of known necessarily as a school that does Environmental Studies. It's not like we're, there's certain schools where that's a big part of their reputation. We're known as an urban school, a very diverse school. We've got some strong programs in various areas. But Environmental Studies is just kind of relatively new. It's not something that we've really established as a reputation for. And most people who do Environmental Studies, they tend to want to go to some place where there's a little more wilderness. You know, that's where folks tend to do that kind of study. We're trying to lean into this idea of urban Environmental Studies with a focus on environmental justice. And we continue to do that. And there's a great need for that kind of programming. And we're hopeful that we can continue to build a program to a point that it really does stand out as someplace that does not just Environmental Studies in a kind of generic way, but really does it in the places where humans live in cities. In places where these environmental problems are most apparent and where the impacts are going to be greatest. So we think there's, the argument for the program and the focus we have is still there. We think that argument is strong. But being able to build it up and really do it the way we think it needs to be done, that's going to take some more time. So you mentioned some enrollment for the program. How was the enrollment when it first started out? Was there a larger interest on campus or was it kind of a build it and they will come situation? Yeah, I mean, it started slowly. Again, you know, I think, yeah, it wasn't like they were students clamoring knocking on our door to say offer this. We brought it to the students really. And we had, you know, the initial sort of recruitment pipeline was through this introductory course, this environmental connections course, where students would sign up for that because it would meet a general ed requirement. And then if they were interested and thought this was cool, then they'd continue in that. And so that was kind of where we got our first few environmental studies majors was through students signing up for that class, which we did with a focus on food. The very first time we have a different theme each year. And so we did a sort of food based course the first time around. And that was quite successful. We ended up cooking a big meal for the campus at the end of the term. And so from that class, we got our first few majors. And then it was just a matter of kind of slowly building a cohort and building interest through a range of different outreach efforts. And it seems like a lot of it is driven by what's going on out in the world. So as there's more awareness of these issues, particularly climate change, you know, it's kind of the biggie that that helped to spur enrollment. So we had, I mean, I could, I have a graph that you chose that we just steadily rose up over, say, the first 10 years of the program from, you know, just one or two majors the first year. Up to, like I said, I think it was, it was maybe around 45, something like that at its peak. And then since then, it's dropped back down and we're down to something like maybe 25 now, overall, and some, you know, other students who are minoring in environmental studies. And, yeah, and I think some of that has just had to do with the, you know, can't blame everything on COVID. That didn't help. And, and I think having lost, losing the position with Emily Schilling taking a different job. And, and then some of the main faculty who've been involved will have just been pulled in other directions with other research interests and other kinds of demands on their time. And, you know, Augsburg did things like, you know, starting the new critical race and ethnicity studies, you know, there's a lot of interest in that area, particularly after the murder of George Floyd. So there's just been some institutional focus has been in some other areas in the last, I don't know, five, five-ish years. But, yeah, it's, the thing about that, even just with our class today, small number of people in that room, the, it remains an issue that there's less interest in it than I would hope there would be, given how, I think, what a big set of challenges they pose. It seems like it's an area where we could use a lot of, a lot of folks. There's a, that's a really important issue. But we continue to find that people are, you know, there are lots of issues. Obviously, they're all, there are a lot of important things and people are very, I think, you know, a lot of students are very interested in just kind of, you know, concerned about getting a good paying job coming out and they don't necessarily identify environmental studies as a place where they're going to do that, even though I think there are a lot of opportunities there too. So, so, yeah, so recruiting new students continues to be a big challenge and has been a challenge for me, I'd say, for all my life. Ever since I started being an activist in, as an undergraduate, trying to get people involved has been a challenge because, you know, the kinds of issues I feel are so important are, are not always easy. It's not always what other people, is that, what's at the top of their list. So, yeah. Yeah. So going on into your interests, obviously the river semester is a big interest of yours. Tell me about starting the program. Yeah. Was there interest? How did it all happen? Yeah, yeah, that was, that's been one of the funnest things and I think really just the highlight of being here has been developing this, this idea of taking students out on the river, not just studying about it in the classroom but studying it in person, and that started as a summer class initially. Just trying to go out. I've been working with an organization called Urban Boat Builders that builds boats, small wooden boats in the Twin Cities here. And they had a couple of rowboats, basically, that were available and I was able to use those and went out with a small group I think was seven or eight students at first in the summer, just a very small group. And again, it was pitched at that point, not as environmental studies, specifically, but just as a one-off summer off-campus program and Augsburg has, you know, done a number of these short term, you did one right, didn't you do a study in Europe, right? I will be this summer. So that kind of thing, two to three weeks, somewhere in there in May or June. So I decided to do one locally. Yeah, and it went fine. It was fun. We were out there in the middle of a flood. It was kind of exciting. And we had some partners with the Audubon Society and a few other groups. There's a nice network of organizations that do work on the Mississippi. And so, and I had to learn a lot about it myself. Initially, I had, you know, the river is just, so it's a whole book, a whole library to study so much. There's so much there to learn. So I spent about the first four or five years just trying to get a basic understanding of how the river works and what it means to be able to take people out on it. And so we did about four or five of those shorter trips, gradually growing longer until we got to a point where I connected with this outfitter called Wilderness Inquiry. And they had the capacity and these big forger canoes that we used to be able to go for the whole semester. And that's when we built it as this whole, you know, a full semester of classes. And that started in 2015. And so that's, you know, certainly been part of environmental studies, but it's also really sort of a standalone thing. It's a very involved project that has taken up more of my time, you know, than any other single part of what I do. It's just very complicated and very time consuming to make something like that happen because it's not easy to offer a full set of college courses while going down the river. So, and definitely one of the great things about being at Augsburg has been that the university has allowed that to happen. There are a lot of places, I think, where they would not have seen that as a viable proposal and just would have, you know, just not allowed it or said that we can't do that or there are all these kinds of issues, you know. I've talked to a lot of other faculty at other schools who are kind of amazed saying that, oh, we can never do that at my school. You know, how did you, how did this happen? Right. And I think that speaks to some of Augsburg's kind of, you know, experimental and kind of ethos and that they're open to new ideas and willing to take some risks. And have that sort of study abroad, you know, strong tradition of study abroad as well. And all those things together made it a place where this kind of program could happen. So, yeah. How has the enrollment been in the river semester recently? It's been sort of holding steady. The biggest year we had, I think, was, was 14, maybe 15 students in a year. And it's, but last year was only nine. So it goes up and down a bit. And again, there's, I've had challenges with recruiting. Because, yeah, for a variety of reasons, it's challenging, you know, it's not something that everybody wants to do or can do. It's pretty physically demanding. You have to really like camping and being outside because we're out for the whole time. And, you know, you have to be away from home, you can't work. There are lots of things that make it difficult for people to do. I tend to get, it's so funny, everyone who hears about it who's already graduated says, oh, I wish they had that when I was an undergrad so I can do it. It's so interesting. So I kind of feel like I should be offering this to adults, you know, because they all, everyone, almost everyone, not everyone, but a lot of people. It's just sort of funny. I can almost count like, oh, man, if I had that when I was in college, that would have been great. But then for the students who are currently here, it's, you know, it's more complicated. There are a lot of obstacles and, you know, demands on your time and professional development concerns and whatever it might be. So yeah, so we're at a point where if we don't get enough enrollment. This next time we probably will have to at least cancel the program maybe not permanently, but at least for that year. The university has been willing to be sort of flexible in the financing of it and, you know, not see it, you know, to kind of subsidize it a little bit, if you will. And, but that can only go on for so long and in the current financial crisis, you know, climate with very limited resources. We're at a point where it's kind of, if we don't get 15 students again, we won't be able to offer it. So, so that's a challenge for this coming year. Make sure we get enough folks involved. And, you know, and again, it's an experiment if there's enough, you know, it's a wonderful thing. It's a, I think even just the idea of it has been a good thing. It's inspired people. It's made people excited about what you can do. But not all experiments, you know, end up working in the long term. So we'll see. That's just the nature of these things is you try and you do your best and see where it lands. So, and we've had, we have some new networks of students across the country who can potentially apply now. On the last trip we went, we actually had more students who were not from Augsburg than from Augsburg. And so to the extent that we can start to draw from schools nationally, then that's, that's all to the good. So we'll see. But by December of this year, we'll, we'll know whether or not we've met the first kind of deadline for how much enrollment there is. So fingers crossed. What have, like, students' reactions been after going on the trip? How have they maybe changed or learned more things going on the trip? Yeah. Yeah. What kind of feedback have you seen? Yeah, I mean, it definitely, like with the semester at sea that I did, I feel like it really changes you. And in lots of different ways. One, I mean, a couple of things really seem to stand out. One is a connect, a very deep, powerful connection to the river itself, the sense that you really care about it. By extension, I think care about the natural world, but you really care about the river, you kind of add this connection to it. So that's one thing that people have said. The other is a greater sense of sort of Bureau of Students' Capacity. It's empowered them, sort of opened their, opened doors, opened their, expanded their sense of what, what's possible. So many of the students have gone on to do some really interesting careers in grad school and different kinds of living arrangements, Fulbright's, and, you know, a lot of the students on it have, have, have kind of continued to lead quite expansive and adventurous lives. And thirdly, I think there's just this idea that there is an alternative way to live from the sort of mainstream practices that characterize much of our lives that we can live a little bit closer to the ground, we can live more simply, we can consume less energy. We can live in a close community that is wonderfully, you know, enjoyable and life giving and, you know, it's not like a hardship to give up all of those sort of modern conveniences. And the fact that so many of these things end up really enriching our lives. So just like allowing all of us to experiment with how we live and, and think about what's working about our lives here at home and what isn't, I think has been really valuable. And a lot of students have come back and, you know, and looked at different ways to live to, to, you know, what kind of communities are they in. I mean, I'm thinking just most immediately from yesterday's yurt building thing that one of the students from last fall is very involved in sort of these community-based alternative living practices and very interested in how we build very energy efficient simple structures that serve social justice need, you know, those sorts of things. That's sort of very much kind of in keeping with the sorts of things we did on the reverse semester. And so, so yeah, it's been fun to see how where students have gone in terms of pursuing kind of alternative ways of living has been part of it. Yeah. So, you know, and then, you know, a few students, you know, they definitely figured that this is not what they want to do, but that happens sometimes. And that's, that's good. And I don't think they've regretted going, you know, I think people have always enjoyed the experience, even if they found it hard and challenging, and they're definitely first few students on the trips over the years. There have been some who've really struggled at certain points with what it was like to be, you know, living outdoors and camping and all of the kind of discomfort that come with that. But, but incredible bonds with their, I mean, you know, they have formed life, I'm pretty sure will be lifelong bonds with the people that they've spent that time with, you know, you really, you really build a really strong sense of community. So, and that's, that's really important because, you know, so much of our community, the fabric of our community has been weakened in recent years, for various reasons. So having that experience, building that ties is really, it's really great. Just like the volleyball team. Exactly. Yes. So tell me about what inspired you to build the boats yourself and kind of process. Yeah. Well, that was, I mean, I've always loved building boats. It was something I was drawn to as a teenager, and it's kind of weird, I don't know why, but, but both my parents were artists, my father's a sculptor, so there was a sense that, you know, this is something you did, you build things, right? So kind of like this class we're doing now, you got some issues or something, build something, do something about it. And so it just so happened that there were sort of three things that coincided in 2022, was it? No, 20, no 2020, the pandemic. I had a sabbatical, so I had a semester off with some time to do some projects and then also my father was quite ill near the end, near the end of his life. And so kind of the three of those things together sort of, I think, inspired me to do this. So one that, the COVID pandemic was just so disruptive. It just seemed like it, and so much of our lives were sort of put on hold, that I was looking for some outlet of something to do that, what could be done in that context. There was, and big social things were off the, off the table, but you could build something if you did that on your own, you know, relatively easily, you could do that and not worry about the, you know, contingent on all that. And sabbatical obviously just gave me some time to do that. So I had that, I wasn't teaching that spring semester and so I was able to devote time to planning and thinking this through. And then with spending time with my father near the end of his life too, I just thought about a kind of testament to him, something that was reflective of the kinds of things he did, which was to, you know, to be creative and to make these sculptures. He actually made vessels like, so this would be one of his pieces here. So he would make these out of bronze, right? And it's a, you know, it's not quite a boat, but it's a vessel, right? It's got an inside and an outside. And so a boat is called a vessel, right? And it has that same basic shape of a kind of bowl that is watertight. And so, so there was something that felt like kind of a, something in honor of his work and life to do this. And it was really fun. I actually was there helping to kind of take care of him. And so we were talking about it and I would show him the drawings and it was just kind of a nice thing to do. So I definitely think it related to what was going on with my relationship to him and his, you know, his life. It was also a way that at this, at that point, we had done three trips on the river, three river semesters with this outfitter, Wilderness Inquiry, and we'd been using these canoes. And it also, we'd just gotten to a point where we felt like we had accumulated enough experience that we could think about taking the program to the next step, to the next level. And also that we could, that we had, as our own program, had developed enough expertise that we could kind of do it ourselves. And at this point, Wilderness Inquiry's specialty was doing more sort of shorter trips, more with younger students. Mostly boundary waters kind of stuff. And we were becoming more of the kind of expert, if you will, in river, longer term river travel. And so part of that was coming up. That then gave us the knowledge, the experience to say, if we were going to do this, what kind of boats would we use? And so being able to develop a boat that's a catamaran, so it has two hulls, it's very stable, it can't tip over. And to put a sail on it just opened up this whole new possibility of sail power, which is just one of, to me, one of the most delightful ways to travel is to have the wind just push you along. It's just, it's a beautiful thing. So all of that together allowed me the time, space, inspiration, et cetera, an opportunity to start drawing things on paper and build a little model. And there it is. And that was literally, you know, this little 1 16th scale model or whatever it is, or 1 12th scale was the basis for the design of these water striders. And so, so yeah, it was great fun to purchase the materials and just go about doing it. I had built one small sailboat when I was in grad school, basically, into my early professional career, taken me a few years. And so I had enough experience in simple boat construction to allow me to feel comfortable doing this. It was definitely a bit of a stretch, a little, a little crazy to try to build the boats pretty much by myself. I had some good friends who helped me, but, and it worked very, very hard that summer to get them barely ready in time. So we were still kind of finished building them, finishing them while we were on the first couple of weeks of the trip, putting the final pieces on as we went. And, but they were great, you know, a few tweaks along the way, a few things we had to fix. And the second time we did it just this last fall, you know, we improved the boats again and we keep upgrading and, you know, we each time we're hoping for next year, we get, we have some upgrades and improvements and so on. But I would hope to continue to have programs where students can be engaged more directly in designing and building things like we're doing with the class this semester. We're just getting people being creative, thinking about solutions, getting their hands on some actual materials and making something that works or, you know, they try it and you see what works and doesn't, because I think there's no better way to learn than by trying things out in the real world. The real world is the ultimate laboratory, the place where everything has to, if it's going to work, that's where it's got to work, it's out there. And so the more I think we can be teaching and learning in ways that get us directly into the world, the better off we'll be. So I'm, you know, I'm definitely committed to trying to do other things like this, maybe not building boats, but something like that, whatever is called for. But I'm, you know, I still just love boats, they're just such cool things and, you know, the river here and so on. I'll be out on the river one way or another for sure. Yeah, so, so yeah. You mentioned some effects COVID-19 has had on programs here at Augsburg. Yeah, just tell me more about that. Yeah. You know, enrollment issues you've had, maybe budget cuts or other things like that, or just students willingness to do these more interactive things. Yeah. Yeah, I mean we were all just went through that disruption and the ways in which it kind of separated us from each other and from the world by, you know, bringing us indoors and into sitting on Zoom screens and, you know, all of that was tough. I, but I found it also provided an opportunity that is to say that, you know, one of the best safest places to be was outdoors. And so I started holding classes outside that first fall. And, and then the first fall of 21 we were able to actually, you know, do the first semester even though the pandemic was still in full swing, and we're able to do it relatively, you know, on with few, just a few modifications, limitations. So, that was another just kind of reinforce the, the value of this kind of education. But, you know, now, you know, going being back in the classroom being back inside working now with students who were in high school during COVID I've just seen. It seems that it's really had an impact that the combination of sort of the isolation of COVID and the pervasiveness of digital technologies together, I think have really kind of presented challenges in the classroom and for learning that we're going to have to really kind of actively engage. And to me again my answer is, let's get outside, let's get moving, let's do something, you know, so I feel like in ways, yes, it was this huge disruption. My takeaway as well, the answer one alternative is, is the kind of education that I've loved doing my entire life and that is experiential and outdoors and embodied and all of that. So, and I think students have generally would agree that you know when you say are you happy you like just sitting in the classroom and doing that most students will say no I don't you know I don't really know what what's going on but I'm not feeling great about this and a lot of students will say yes I would love to be outside or I do when we go outside and we're doing these kinds of things. They, they respond really well. That being said, yeah I mean the sort of financial strains that the pandemic presented are definitely with us, but it's, I don't know, it's not just the pandemic as well I mean it's a range of things that have basically reduced the income for many individuals. Institutions of higher ed, and the pandemic was just one of them, and we had that little. We had a year or two where we had a bunch of, you know, federal money that would help bridge the gap but once that money went away we were, you know, we're definitely left short. And it's just yeah it's a demographic changes, changes in the economy more broadly, declines in government support, raising costs of everything from health insurance to, you know, energy or whatever, all of those things are just kind of putting a budget squeeze on higher ed and lots of places but higher ed is definitely feeling it. So, you know, yeah at this point, it kind of feels like the COVID piece is sort of passed and now I feel like it's the bigger impact are the technology piece, and just these mix of economic and financial pressures that are putting the squeeze on on places like Augsburg and programs like the river semester. So, so yeah, you know, I can't say that COVID isn't, you know, it's still we're still feeling the effects of it. We're still, you know, asking here and there and there's did change things, there's more zoom there's you know there's there's lingering effects, but I feel like now it's, it's, it's kind of now been. There are other issues that are becoming more of a challenge, I would say, at this point, which is, I mean, I think, you know, knock on wood that we're not going back. We're not going back to another pandemic. That was no fun. We hope we've had that enough of that for a little while. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm telling more about the budget cuts Augsburg and how they've affected you specifically or people around you. Yeah, classes. Well, they've just been, yeah. A, the last. I mean, Augsburg has never been rolling in the dough they've never been incredibly wealthy institution but when I started here, you know, which is a long time ago now. The late 90s early 2000s. There was just the budget was just healthier than it was I didn't was funny back then we didn't think it was but we just had more staff, we had more support, there was more money available to do research and travel or run pro other programs. And I think, gradually over time, labor costs have increased. So each person who is hired here has to be paid more money or paid more money for health care, the cost of labor, skip to be skilled labor, people with advanced degrees has gone up. associated with running you receive going up, and, you know, tuition has gone up but not at the same rate, and we have, you know, and then other things like this new building the Hager Center is taken, we had to borrow money to build that that's taken money out of the, out of the, out of the budget. So, I don't think there's any one specific thing that has, we can pinpoint to say that we're now at a place where there's just a lot. We're just running much leaner than we were, and around campus you can you feel that there are empty offices right there, there are staff people are just aren't here anymore. And that's across the board. There are places, you know, from grounds crew to human to the strongman center on the crew center to academic advising to facilities to the custodial to administrative assistants mean this office right down the hall from he used to have a, we used to have administrative assistant there. Now empty, you know there, then that's true a lot of places around campus and so there are fewer faculty now. And we're, we're just it feels like we're a smaller institution than we were. And I think that's, that's tough. You know we used to do programs like the model United Nations program, we would go to New York City for a week and over spring break and there's amazing opportunities students coming out of that did all sorts of great work. We don't, we can't afford that anymore. You know, there are semesters is limping along and may not make it through another budget cycle, you know. There are a lot of, you know, these sort of extras we used to be able to provide to students that we just can't anymore they just don't seem to be in the, in the budget. So it's, it's, I think it has really affected the quality of the education, I think we're doing the best we can with these limited resources, and, you know, and there are some new things happening it's not all cuts. The new building is great. It certainly is a wonderful facility. We have some new programs like the crest program and so on. So it's not like it's been. Everything's been cut there are some new things, but, but yeah, it's not feeling like a time in higher education when there's a lot of excitement it feels more like a period of retrenchments and we're having to kind of see where this lands and where we go from here. There's a lot of uncertainty in the, in this realm, I would say. Yeah. So, what do you see in store for the near future of the environmental studies program maybe five years out for environmental studies. My hope is that we see it continue to sort of rebound. I would love to see it get back up to having close to 50 majors. We are beginning to have some new conversations about new courses and possibly new faculty coming in, in, you know, there. And we have a new hire in sociology who does, you know, urban urban sociology and GIS. There's some new biology hires there's folks that we can begin to see some rebuilding. And my hope is to particularly try to build out a kind of urban experiential set of programs that might be kind of like a river semester but in the Twin Cities. So, it's an idea that you might be able to do a range of different outdoor activities, but still in the Twin Cities area maybe sometime on the river but also time in different neighborhoods and visiting different sites with environmental issues going on there things to learn about meeting with local environmental activists, there's just a very rich set of learning opportunities here. That seems like it might be make a lot of sense, both in terms of what we want to see for the department, the program. Also maybe a way to take some of what the river semester has involved but do it in a way that's more accessible to students who can't be gone for the whole semester. And also to replace some, some of the programming that's gone away because of budget cuts and just do it in a way that's not as expensive because it's local. So this kind of urban wilderness idea is really appealing, and I think has some promise. And so we've had some nice conversations about that both with the urban studies program here with the education department Jason Lukasik has been very interested in that. So, so yeah, so that would, you know, and again in terms of environmental studies we've always wanted it to be a program with an urban environmental justice focus. And I think if we were to develop more programs like this, more classes that really got students out into the city more. And, you know, out onto the river but just right here, right, just in the Twin Cities area that that would be a way to really realize the initial vision of the, of the program and do it in a way that fits within the limits that we have to face currently. So, so that's the dream. And still, of course, occasional trip down the river to the Gulf of Mexico if we can swing it, but yeah, and if not also potentially just doing again maybe trips that go from here down to La Crosse and back and that's a beautiful stretch of the river, and that would be a great, you know, no complaints about just doing that. That kind of more local, a little bit less complicated set of trips that way. So, so yeah, but, you know, the environmental issues aren't going away. There's going to be a huge transformation in our economy and our society in the next 30-40 years. And we, we've got to be part of that. And so I'm pretty confident that we will be involved and that there will be students who want to be part of that because that work needs to be done and there will be good paying jobs and there will be the effects of climate change are only going to get worse. And so I think all of those things together mean that this isn't going away. And if we do it right, I think we could have a really great program in five to 10 years, building on our scraps, our strengths as a scrappy experimental, you know, urban university. So, yeah. Well, thank you so much for talking with me. Thank you for your time. Sure. It was lovely. Yeah, thanks for the good questions. Yeah, this was good. It's always fun to have a chance to think about these things, reflect on them a little bit. So, so yeah. Thanks again. Sure thing. Okay, good.