Exposing undergraduates to history first-hand through the active learning process is an effective and rewarding way to help them learn about the evolution and nature of urban life.This article highlights the experience of an urban studies professor in implementing active learning models and inquiry-based exercises into four separate undergraduate courses; an interdisciplinary introductory course in urban studies, a survey course in American urban history, an upper-level class in environmental history and public policy, and a specialized course on community development and urban renewal. It argues that a wide variety of local sources can be used to illustrate larger urban trends and environmental themes while at the same time exciting students about becoming scholars, public policy professionals, and informed citizens.
The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America’s Research Universities (Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1998), http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/Pres/boyer.nsf/ (accessed June 9, 2008). For a favorable overview of the Boyer Commission, see Lion F. Gardiner, "Why We Must Change: The Research Evidence," Thought and Action 14, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 71-88.
2.
Andrew H. Myers, "Teaching History in the Backyard," The History Teacher 35, no 4 (August 2002): 455-64; Charles Bright, "‘It Was As If We Were Never There’: Recovering Detroit’s Past for History and Theater," The Journal of American History 88, no. 4 (March 2002): 1440-46; Phillip C. Adamo, "Medieval Connections: Active Learning and the Teaching of the Middle Ages," Teaching History: A Journal of Methods 31, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 59-73. For specific examples of active learning in environmental history classes, see Michael Lewis, "‘This Class Will Write a Book’: An Experiment in Environmental History Pedagogy," Environmental History 9, no. 4 (October 2004): 604-19; and Robert M. Rakoff, "Doing Original Research in an Undergraduate Environmental History Course," The History Teacher 37, no.1 (November 2003), http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/37.1/rakoff.html (accessed June 2, 2008).
3.
Brian F. Geiger, "Teaching about History and Science through Archaeology Service Learning," The Social Studies 95, no. 4 (July/August 2004): 166-71; Learn and Serve, America’s National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, "What is Service-Learning?" http://www.servicelearning.org/what_is_servicelearning/service-learning_is/index.php (accessed June 9, 2008).
4.
James Axtell, "The Pleasures of Teaching History," The History Teacher 34, no. 4 (August 2001), http:// www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/34.4/axtell.html, paragraphs #14-15 (accessed May 22, 2008).
5.
Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours For What We Will: Workers & Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Vincent E. Powers, Invisible Immigrants: The Pre-Famine Irish Community in Worcester, Massachusetts, From 1826 to 1860 (New York: Garland Publications, 1989). For more recent scholarly work on Worcester see Timothy J. Meagher, Inventing Irish America: Generation, Class, and Ethnic Identity in a New England City, 1880-1928 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).
6.
Raymond Mohl, The Making of Urban America, 2nd ed. (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Press, 1997); Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will; Thomas O’Conner, The Hub: Boston Past and Present (Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 2001).
7.
Steven H. Corey, "The Brownfields of Worcester: History, Higher Education, and Public Policy Analysis." Paper presented at Brownfields 2000-Research and Regionalism: Revitalizing the American Community, sponsored by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Atlantic City, New Jersey, October 11-13, 2000.
8.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962); Andrew Szasz, Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment (New York: Vintage Books, 1997); Richard Hofrichter, ed., Reclaiming the Environmental Debate: The Politics of Health in a Toxic Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
9.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962); Andrew Szasz, Ecopopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environmental Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Sandra Steingraber, Living Downstream: A Scientist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997); and Richard Hofrichter (ed.), Reclaiming the Environmental Debate: The Politics of Health in a Toxic Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). Successful readings that highlight the larger historical context of urban environmental history and public policy formation include William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1991); John T. Cumbler, Reasonable Use: The People, the Environment, and the State, 1790-1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Samuel P. Hays, Explorations in Environmental History (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998); Martin V. Melosi, The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in American from Colonial Times to the Present (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (New York: Routledge, 1992, 2005); Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action (New York: Random House, 1995).
10.
Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, http://db.state.ma.us/dep/cleanup/sites/search.asp (accessed June 17, 2008).
11.
United States Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry, "Toxic Substances Portal," http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/substances/index.html (accessed June 17, 2008).
12.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); Herbert Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class Life of Urban Americans (New Press, 1962); Jon Teaford, The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940-1985 (Johns Hopkins, 1990); Janet Abu-Lughod, From Urban Village to East Village: The Battle for New York’s Lower East Side (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994); Larry Bennett, Neighborhood Politics: Chicago and Sheffield (New York: Garland, 1997); Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday, 1992).
13.
Steven H. Corey and Mark T. Motte, "In Our Own Backyards: Inquiry-based Learning and Institutional Collaboration at Two New England College," PS: Political Science and Politics, 36, no. 3 (July 2003): 427-32. For a more extensive view of the so-called "Providence Renaissance," see Francis J. Leazes, Jr. and Mark T. Motte, Providence: The Renaissance City (Lebanon, NH: Northeastern University Press, 2004).
