ABOUT THIS COURSE:
This ethics field course is designed to introduce you to the idea of conservation in Western thought against the historical backdrop of 
the worldwide societal march toward modernity and progress and the American expansion west under the principle of Manifest Destiny. Curated readings will expose students to philosophies such as utilitarianism, transcendentalism, preservationism, and ecological ethics and to the founders, agitators, and legislative actors of what came to be the American Conservation Movement. See how our collective affinity for new
technologies, social equality, economic growth, and societal progress contributed to the conquest of the natural world, a pervasive natural resource management ideology, and the seeds of powerful reactionary movements in art, science, and philosophy, for example. Those reactionary movements birthed the National Parks System, the Wilderness Act, and many other transformative pieces of conservation legislation that became the global standard for protecting natural resources for future generations. We’ll dive into the polar concepts of wilderness and modernity and the tension between the natural world and society's advancement and technological progress, with readings and discussion about many interesting dualities: natural-artificial, simplicity-complexity, connection-alienation, sustainability-exploitation, individualism-collectivism, and timelessness-transience. You’ll be challenged to place yourself on a number of the nature-society continuums and to understand why a look 
inside each of us reveals biophilia and technophilia, wild and civil.
Contemporary debates about the use and misuse of natural resources, the intensification of food production, the rights of nature and property, endangered species protection, suburban-urban sprawl, the new challenges of tech culture, restoration of Indigenous culture and land rights, and our race beyond the planetary boundaries of sustainable development will ensure that this conservation ethics course is well-grounded in contemporary policy and philosophical debates. We'll also consider how native populations have derived different meanings from the land than is common among productivist farmers in the Midwest, and the Genius Loci, or spirit of the place(s) we visit.
THE LOCATION:
This course takes inspiration from author and poet Jim Harrison, who once said: "People should get out and travel at random everywhere. I don’t see the point of sitting around campus like a full can of worms all stuck together". What makes this ethics course unique is the location. Immerse in the philosophies of conservation and environment and the realities of science and technology to feed, clothe, and house over 8 billion people while camping in Yellowstone National Park, backpacking in the Great Burn Wilderness Study Area, exploring Glacier National Park and Great Bear Wilderness Area, and driving through the National Bison Range and Badlands National Park. We won’t just read about wildlife conservation, biodiversity loss, and concentrated animal production in the modern world: we’ll consider those and many other ideas while exploring a region that holds the last two populations of grizzly bears in the lower 48, viewing one of the largest Bison preservation sites in the US, and scouting for moose, elk, and bears in some of the least developed tracts of land in the area.
Montana represents an excellent comparative contrast with Iowa. Dominated by industrial-scale agriculture, Iowa is among the most human-altered landscapes on the planet and one of the only states without a federally designated wilderness area. Montana is home to two of the largest and earliest 
federal land conservation designations in the US park system. and home to the second largest piece of undeveloped land in the lower 48 states. Both states have abundant natural resources and support extractive industries, and both are scattered throughout with rural towns.
Our two-week base camp is the great ISU facility, the Rod & Connie French Conservation Camp, tucked deep in western Montana’s Lolo National Forest. Shared bedrooms, private baths, a large kitchen and common eating area, a classroom, and excellent grounds that include basketball and volleyball courts, a pond, and direct access to Fish Creek make this a perfect location to recharge between our field days, dive into the course readings, catch up on laundry, and sketch out observations and insights from your days in the backcountry.
SOME THINGS WE'LL DO IN 2024:
- A day trip into UN World Heritage designated Glacier National Park
- Some hiking and camping in Badlands National Park
- Several days camping and exploring Yellowstone National Park, the first NP designation in the US.
- Backpacking in a wilderness study area
- Day hikes in national and state forests
- Excursions to rural communities throughout the Rocky Mountains
- A visit to one of the largest superfund sites in the US
- Service learning with the Montana Dept of Fish and Wildlife
- Lecture and learn with a conservation non-profit
- Q&A with a Western big game hunting guide
- Rest and relax time at the Rod and Connie French Conservation Camp
- A night in the beautiful Custer State Park of the Black Hills National Forest
- A night at the ISU Geology Camp in Eastern Wyoming
- A half day at the Flathead Reservation's National Bison Refuge
- Opportunities to stand-up paddle board on Flathead Lake, and swim in Yellowstone Lake, Heart Lake, Clark Fork River, and Fish Creek.
This is a learn-by-seeing course: You’ll learn about conservation by contrasting developed landscapes with unaltered ones. We’ll discuss wildlife conservation, visit a designated Wild and Scenic River in northern Montana, and meet with local stakeholders to better 
understand the challenges and opportunities of conservation efforts in rural places. We’ll also lend a hand to conservation efforts with service learning days in a national forest. Throughout, we'll consider conservation from a social and cultural perspective, with special attention to the human values, beliefs, and worldviews that inform conservation and preservation debates. The goal is to have you take back with you to the Ames campus a deeper, personal, and lasting impression of conservation values, ethics, and the varied resources, such as the animals, forests, and cultures, at the center of conservation debates (and a killer field notebook!).
ABOUT THIS COURSE:
This is a 3-credit fall semester hybrid course. The first two weeks are spent on the road and at the ISU Montana campus, which serves as our base of operations for day trips and several multi-night excursions into western Montana’s Rocky Mountains. We depart for Montana on August 9th and return to Ames on August 22nd, just in time for the official start of the fall semester. Field time in Montana is equivalent to two credit hours. The final credit hour will be earned with several weeks of pre-trip field prep assignments, one field day during the first month of the Fall semester. and several; post Montana virtual assignments. The course fee of $1250 covers food, lodging, and transportation. It'll be awesome.
ABOUT THE ROD AND CONNIE FRENCH CONSERVATION CAMP:
The Rod and Connie French Conservation Camp is a great facility with rooms (shared), beds, showers, and many large group facilities (kitchen, conference rooms, etc.). The facility has power, but due to its remote location, mobile network coverage is limited. The camp sits in the heart of Lola National Forest, making it an ideal base camp from which to run day trips throughout the area.
During our nearly two weeks at the French Creek Conservation Camp, you’ll spend time exploring the Great Burn Wilderness Study Area, a large tract of land just west of the ISU French Creek Conservation Camp.
You'll keep a field notebook with you during your time away from Iowa to record your observations, daily schedule, field activities, the interesting things you see in the Montana backcountry, your thoughts and reflections, and what you hear from people living in the places we visit. You will also use digital data collection methods (photographs, videos) to capture what you see, hear, and experience in the field.
The Rod & Connie French Conservation Education Camp
5525 W. Fork Fish Creek Road
Alberton, MT 59820 (check out the facilities)
WHAT TO BRING:
ISU Recreation Services has all of the gear we will need for day hikes and overnight camping, so you won't need to run out and buy a pile of supplies to enroll in the course. If you are new to spending time in the backcountry and are as stoked as I am for Montana, you might think about one of the awesome courses offered by ISU Rec Services. You can get a jumpstart on what goes into prepping for a backpacking trip here. Once the course enrollment has closed, I'll be in contact with supply lists and next steps.
BACK IN AMES:
The last four weeks of the course are completed back in Ames. Our reading material and discussions in the last several weeks will focus on the kinds of conservation practices that are most debated in Iowa these days, including farmland conservation practices, land and soil ethics, and natural resource policies. Reading assessments will be completed online and class discussions will be in a classic seminar style, but virtual. Your primary effort back in Ames is to compile your field notes, reading assignment notes, and other observations and synthesize them into something meaningful. Depending on your discipline and career path, this may take the form of a field report, a policy brief, a photo ethnography, or a podcast, for example.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Dr. Dorius spent more than a decade researching the cross-national and global spread of modernity. Using international survey data, vital statistics (births and deaths), and social media data, Dr. Dorius and colleagues documented the global expansion of a developmentalist ideology (pro-technology, development, and progress) and demonstrated how this worldview has contributed to changes in age at marriage, size of family, adoption of technology, the expansion of education, and rural-urban migration flows. With training in social psychology, rural sociology, international development, and population ecology, Dr Dorius brings a rich body of scholarship to this field course.
Dr Dorius spent time living in the California suburbs, working for the Forest Service in western Idaho, building condos in Montana ski towns, studying in the deserts of the Saudi peninsula, and doing field research in villages in tropical Malawi and Uganda, enabling a rich blend of science, culture, ecology, and society in this field course.
If this course sounds right for you, navigate to ISUAbroad and complete a brief application. Because of Wilderness area restrictions on group size, the number of seats in this course is limited. To read a few things that last year's students had to say, check here.