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EILS Report
Sustainability activities – Cabrillo College Environmental Health course
Submitted by Alyssa Steiner, MPH
Introduction: During the fall 2013 semester, Cabrillo College adjunct instructor Alyssa Steiner, implemented two sustainability activities for the EILS grant in the same Environmental Health class. The first activity focused on answering questions about water sustainability after assigned reading and viewing a film on the topic. The second activity was based on the provided LAB 1: Defining the Problem – Understanding Sustainability Criteria” activity. They are each described in more detail below.

Activity 1: The plan submitted for the first activity was for groups of students to work together to answer questions about the documentary film “Poisoned Waters” and apply their acquired information to real world issues regarding water resources. On 10/21/13, thirty-seven of my Environmental Health students took a pretest about water quality and sustainability. (See Appendix A) Then, students were assigned Chapter 7 “Drinking
Water” from Environmental Health by Dade. W. Moeller (4th ed.) as homework. The following class, I lectured on this chapter, particularly on background about sources of drinking water (including local), water pollution, water scarcity, and water conservation. On 10/28/13, I planned to show “Poisoned Waters “, a Frontline PBS produced documentary chronicling water pollution in some of America’s primary waterways, and conduct the group activity. Unfortunately, the Cabrillo campus was closed due to a campus-wide power outage on this day.
Therefore, I had to assign the film and questions to students as homework (See Appendix B), to work on independently. These questions were adapted from the Teacher’s Guide discussion questions on the “Poisoned
Waters” website (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/poisonedwaters/discussion.html).

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