Thriving in Academe

Ecology in the Lecture Hal

How important is the educational environment to the process of learning?
by Jim Banning, Colorado State University

Looking at professors as ecologists gives us fresh and stimulating perspectives on our work and our environment.

Metaphors abound for understanding the role of college professors. We often speak, for example, of faculty as "artists," as "actors," and as "coaches." But how about looking at faculty members as "ecologists?"

The word ecology stems from the Greek word "oikos," meaning house. Eugene Odum, a pioneer ecologist, noted that ecology is the "study of households." For most biological ecologists "household" refers to the total environment, including plants, animals, and the nonliving elements.

When using the ecology metaphor in reference to teaching faculty, the "household" is a special educational environment—the college classroom: an "ecosystem"—a basic functional unit within an ecology that includes both organisms and the nonliving environment.

Ecological psychologist Kurt Lewin viewed human ecosystems as comprising three major variables: behavior, person, and the environment [B = f (P, E)].

That is, human behavior is a function of the interaction between persons and their environment.

Using this formulation allows us to begin to view the teaching role of faculty members from an ecological perspective.

Meet Jim Banning
Jim Banning, professor of education at Colorado State University, is an environmental psychologist whose work focuses on the role campus physical environments play in the growth and development of students. He teaches qualitative research methods for the school of education and an environmental psychology course for the psychology department. Banning has co-authored a recent book with Carney Strange of Bowling Green University, Educating by Design: Creating Campus Environments that Work (Jossey-Bass, 2000). Banning's work has led to interesting experiences, such as tabulating and interpreting more than 4,000 bumper stickers on vehicles in campus parking lots to help develop a sense of the campus's culture-bumper sticker ethnography! He can be reached at banning@cahs.colostate.edu or CEcology@aol.com.

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