Image Credit: National Center for Smart Growth
The University of Maryland’s new Partnership for Action Learning in Sustainability (PALS) officially launched Wednesday, September 25th in Frederick, Maryland. PALS debuted 28 courses geared toward galvanizing sustainable growth in Frederick for the 2014-2015 academic year and draws from seven different schools at UMD, including the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Developed by UMD's National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG), with support from the Town Creek Foundation and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, PALS is the first initiative of its kind at the university. Its mission is to blend student ingenuity, classroom concepts and faculty expertise in a meaningful way, leveraging the entire weight of the university's assets to help Maryland communities become leaders in sustainable practices.
Coursework customized by PALS faculty targets the goals and projects articulated by Frederick, engaging students directly with the community on real projects. Faculty members from the Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, for example, will have students conceptualize shared use paths to make Frederick’s downtown area more walkable and bikeable, analyze the potential for urban design in the city’s North East Street Corridor, and investigate solutions for algae growing in Carroll Creek. “We're looking at not just the algae in the creek, but characteristics of the entire watershed that can contribute to solutions to the problem," says David Myers, the landscape architecture professor leading that specific course. "These problems are multi-scale and multi-issue, typically."
In all, about 50,000 hours of student work and faculty expertise from the University of Maryland will be dedicated to Frederick over the next two semesters.
"PALS is a landmark program for the university, in that it will pool the vast resources of faculty and students campus-wide for Maryland communities," says Uri Avin, director of PALS. "This is an extraordinary example of multiple programs collaborating with one community in mind. We hope the impact will be profound."
Avin estimates that 300 students will participate in PALS coursework this year. To learn more about PALS, visit the program website.
