Environment

Commonplace Books in the Classroom: Organizing Ideas and Making Art

art, Classes, Environment, Humanities, STS Faculty

By Christy Tidwell and Erica Haugtvedt

This semester, we both asked students in our classes (Introduction to Humanities and Environmental Literature & Culture) to create commonplace books. We found this to be a successful way to get students thinking about core ideas from class and to encourage creative activity. Read on for more information about commonplace books, how we used them, and how students responded!

What Are Commonplace Books?

Commonplace books have a long history – extending as far back as people have had easy access to paper and writing utensils – and are a way of organizing information for yourself. They can overlap with journals or diaries, but they’re also for classifying and indexing information to find later, and they have taken various shapes over time as they have served different purposes for different groups of people. Religious leaders’ commonplace books in the 17th century, for instance, look and function differently than young ladies’ commonplace books in the 19th. Adam Smyth provides a pretty standard definition of them: “the commonplace book presents a series of thematic headings under which aphorisms are distributed, gathered from reading, or, more rarely, from conversation, and deemed in some way useful or exemplary” (91).

Page from a commonplace book by author Charles Lamb (1775-1834). Public domain.

However, Smyth also notes that actual commonplace books only sometimes followed this description. He writes,

The experience of reading manuscript commonplace books is often an experience of baffled delight – delight at pages so crammed with text that annotations spill over the binding and covers; at devotional aphorisms jostling with bawdy epigrams and recipes . . . ; at scraps of printed pages glued into the manuscript; at prose merging with verse merging with financial accounts merging with illustrations; at blank pages, and gaps; at entire printed books bound into the centre of manuscripts; at the construction of a single manuscript out of many different sized pages; at the recycling of old, often medieval texts in the binding of manuscripts; at texts that simultaneously ‘begin’ from various points within their pages and    proceed in various directions, so that it becomes meaningless to talk of a front or back, a beginning or an end. (90-91)

Smyth goes on to describe this as an “eclecticism of inclusions” and “rampantly inventive materialism” (91), descriptions which beautifully highlight the flexibility and openness of commonplace books and their inherently physical nature. Both of these elements are closely tied to goals of humanities classrooms that emphasize practicing and learning about a wide range of modes of expression (e.g., film, art, literature, philosophy) and that value creators’ and students’ experiences of the world.

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Students sit at a table playing the board game while Dr. Witlacil observes.

What can games teach us about climate change?: Playing CATAN – New Energies for World Climate Games Day

Classes, Environment

By Mary Witlacil

Earlier this semester, students in Environmental Law and Policy (POLS 407) played CATAN – New Energies for the second annual Worldwide Climate Games Day. New Energies is an updated version of CATAN, where players jockey to collect enough resources to build out their society and develop their energy infrastructure. Players can choose to develop cheaper fossil fuels to collect more resources or opt for more expensive renewable energy plants. With more fossil fuel power plants the global footprint climbs higher, which increases the likelihood of triggering a natural disaster or a pollution event.

A Catan game board midway thorugh play, featuring tokens distributed across the game world.

The game gives players a choice between working collaboratively to bring down their global carbon footprint, or teaming up against each other to build out their fossil fuel energy grids. One group of students played cooperatively by trading resources with each other and exclusively building out renewable energy. Reflecting on this strategy, one student noted that the game helped them recognize the role international cooperation plays in combatting climate change.

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What Do You Love About Parks?: STS at the Earth Day Expo

Environment, Events

This past weekend, the STS program set up tables at the Earth Day Expo (held on the campus of Western Dakota Tech here in Rapid City) to share information about STS and ask visitors to think about parks as a piece of nature we regularly interact with.

With a whiteboard for sharing ideas in response to the key question – What do you love about parks? – and a table for visitors to build their ideal park, we invited lots of hands-on participation and engagement.

Parks are a great way to practice STS ways of thinking at any age, since they are intersections between natural and social spaces and they are shaped by our technologies as well as our social needs and expectations. Plus, it’s fun to play with toys, felt, and clay!

We hope to be back at the Earth Day Expo again next year!

Whiteboard with the question What do you LOVE about parks? at the top. Answers focus on beauty and education, bugs, and trees.
Some of the answers to our question about what we love about parks.
Two green felt park spaces with trees and paths and ponds and animals, etc.
Some very full park designs!
Dr. Pritchard observes children working on park design elements.
Dr. Kayla Pritchard at the table while kids build parts of a park. (Photo credit: Rapid City Municipal Government.)
A few children - seen from behind - working on park elements.
Kids working on park development.

Service Learning at Trinity Eco Prayer Park III: Choosing Native Grasses

Classes, communication

Reflections on Service Learning Lessons with Trinity Eco Prayer Park in Dr. Haugtvedt’s Fall 2025 STEM Communication for Public and Technical Audiences Course

Mario Dominguez: Restoring a Prairie, One Volunteer Step at a Time

When our class partnered with Trinity Eco Prayer Park this semester, I expected a simple clean-up project. What I discovered instead was a living example of how small ecological changes can ripple through an entire landscape. One of the most striking lessons came from learning how invasive species, especially Canada thistle, can spread quickly and choke out native grasses. These native plants aren’t just background scenery; they anchor soil, trap moisture, and support insects, birds, and even the microorganisms underground. Removing an invasive patch doesn’t just make the park look nicer, it helps restore the natural cycles that keep the prairie healthy.

Our time in the park also revealed how restoration is as much about people as plants. Every volunteer who pulled weeds or cleared debris added visible progress, but they also became connected to the ecosystem they were helping. Science communication often talks about “ecosystem services,” but seeing the concept firsthand–cleaner soil, healthier growth, and a space that brings peace to visitors–made the science feel personal. Trinity Eco Prayer Park isn’t just a project site; it’s a reminder that anyone can make a meaningful impact when they understand the science behind their actions.

By the end of the semester, our team didn’t just complete a service project, we contributed to a small but powerful example of community-driven ecological restoration. And that’s what I hope others see when they visit the park: a place where science, stewardship, and community come together to revive a prairie one season at a time.

Lucas Geiger

While our team was researching possible alternatives for the Kentucky Bluegrass lawn at Trinity Eco Prayer Park it became clear that the simplest and most sustainable solution could be found right outside of town. We thought that native South Dakota grasses like prairie dropseed, western wheatgrass and buffalo grass are naturally built for the local climate and would be great options for the park’s ideology. In their own ways, they can all handle droughts, bounce back after foot traffic and survive through large temperature swings. Creating a mix of the three seemed like the best option to maximize each species’ strengths and weaknesses. This is contrary to the existing Kentucky Bluegrass which is unable to take care of itself without significant work.

Choosing native grasses for the park isn’t just a design choice, it fits in with the park’s ecological values. These grass species will help improve the existing soil’s health, support the local insect diversity and create a landscape that changes more naturally throughout the year. Our goal for the lawn conversion was to give the park a stronger connection to South Dakota’s natural landscaping by replacing one of the last non-native areas in the park.

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An aerial view of a city showing a smoggy sky above the buildings.

Models: How accurate are they?

Atmospheric Science Students

By Ryleigh Czajkowski

I have always been curious about the weather and climate, as my dad was a pilot and used to teach me little things about the atmosphere. When I entered college, I decided to follow that curiosity by majoring in atmospheric sciences and developed a new interest in air quality along the way. Air quality is an issue that has global effects with potential detrimental impacts, and I would like to find a job that uses scientific understanding of air pollution to make impactful actions and policies. Specifically, I would like to go into pollution modeling and management to help mitigate the effects of pollution on communities and ecosystems.

This interest was sparked during an internship I had last summer as part of NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP). This experience allowed me to use airborne data to validate the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Community Multiscale Air Quality Model (CMAQ), to see how accurately the model predicts the concentrations of different pollutants. The CMAQ model works by incorporating meteorological (wind, temperature, etc.), emission, and chemical models to simulate the concentrations of trace gases, particulate matter, and atmospheric pollutants both spatially and temporally (EPA, 2022). 

A group of people standing outside near the tail of a plane with NASA on the tail.
Property of NASA SARP. Credit: Madison Landi.

For my senior capstone project, I will be expanding on my previous research to build a better understanding of the capabilities of the model, as it recently underwent an update in 2022 to improve the meteorological processes and emissions. I will focus on the South Coast Air Basin in California, an area with known, notable air quality issues (Chen, et al., 2020) and the levels of formaldehyde and methane there. Both methane and formaldehyde act as active gases in the atmosphere. With methane concentrations on the rise (Feng, et al., 2023) and formaldehyde as a health and environmental irritant (Lucken, et al., 2018), they are important gases to study and understand. I will be assessing how well the CMAQ model can simulate the concentrations of formaldehyde and methane in the atmosphere, as well as the accuracy of  the meteorological inputs (i.e., wind) as they greatly affect the behavior and amounts of those gasses. (Barsanti, et al., 2019). 

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Reef Revival

STS Students

By Keaton Gray

I had a really hard time narrowing down a topic for my capstone. I wanted to research so many things, and as soon as I got into research on a topic I’d learn about a whole other aspect and want to switch my project. I decided to focus my capstone on reef restoration because of my obsession with their beauty, but also because they are under immediate threat due to anthropocentric (i.e., human-caused) problems like climate change and pollution. Additionally, I have seen the negative effects of coral bleaching firsthand on the reefs surrounding the Big Island of Hawaii, and seeing it just makes your heart hurt!   

Image of coral reef with small fish swimming around in it.
“Coral Reef at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge” by USFWS Headquarters is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Restoration involves targeted efforts to repair or enhance damaged reef ecosystems. This process typically includes coral propagation and transplantation but also entails assisted evolution and assisted larvae dispersal (Boström-Einarsson et al 2020). My research focuses on two questions: 1) What are the most effective and sustainable methods for restoring coral reefs to promote reef resilience and 2) How can these strategies be applied in different coastal environments to maximize coastal protection and positively impact local communities? 

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To Dust We Shall Return?

Atmospheric Science Students, STS Students

By Lillian Knudtson

Weather affects all people, and it is important for meteorologists to understand a wide range of events to communicate effectively to the public. My capstone is a project designed to dissect a particularly interesting phenomenon, especially to South Dakota. I have chosen to do a case study of a particular dust storm known as a haboob. The storm I am focusing on occurred May 12th, 2022, and it impacted the eastern part of South Dakota. A widespread, long-lived thunderstorm called a derecho created the haboob beginning in the south central portion of Nebraska and traveled north and east towards Sioux Falls. It sustained winds of 80 miles per hour, and the highest recorded winds of the event were 107 miles per hour. This storm is a good example of what is possible and can become a sample case for the future.

Photo of giant reddish-brown dust cloud blowing in from the right side of the image, approaching a playground and a few people watching it.

A haboob is a giant dust storm. It is named after the Arabic word habb, meaning “blown.” This type of storm is most common in the Middle East and Northern Africa, where is it historically arid. But haboobs are also well known in the Southwestern United States and are becoming an occurrence in previously unlikely places as well. Haboobs are created from loose particles that are picked up by strong winds caused by storms like monsoons or derechos sweeping across the surface of the earth. The massive amount of precipitation associated with these events evaporate, which is a cooling process, so cool air called a gust front accelerates out in front of the storm at a fast rate, picking up particles and building a wall of air and dirt. The particles are mostly less than 10 micrometer pieces of dirt, dust, and sand, but they can be as large as a pea, and the wind can pick up other debris along with it. These walls of air and dirt can reach grow to 5000 feet tall and 100 miles wide, and they can move at 60 miles an hour (Eagar, Herckes, Hartnett, 2016). Overall it is a phenomenon that is quite terrifying.

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It Spins Me Right Round: What’s The Big Deal With Tornadoes?

Atmospheric Science Students, Environment, STS Students

By Cory Schultz

If you look at the annual average number of tornadoes per country, the United States reigns supreme, whether we like it or not. And if we look at South Dakota, the state is not without its share of tornadic activity. For instance, as Dennis Todey, Jay Trobec, and H. Michael Mogil write, “A massive outbreak of tornadoes placed the state in the severe weather record book on the evening of June 24, 2003” (19). On that day, sixty-seven tornadoes touched down over a 6-hour period, a single-state record tornado occurrence.

So, you may be thinking to yourself right now, “I live in the Black Hills region of South Dakota. We don’t have a problem with tornadoes.” Well, what if I told you that tornado activity has increased in the Northern Black Hills of South Dakota in the last decade? This increase in activity is not typical for the Northern Black Hills, since only nine tornadoes have been reported in this region since NOAA started gathering tornado data in 1950. What makes this even more alarming is that, of these nine cases, four have occurred in the last decade. This increase is the focus of my capstone with my two-part research question: Do the Northern Black Hills tornadoes that occurred in 2015, 2018, and 2020 have any similar characteristics to each other? Will this help determine when new tornadoes will form over the same region? 

Map of the Black Hills showing tornado tracks and the strength of the tornadoes. A handful are circled west of Lead, SD.
Map of Northern Black Hills tornado tracks and strengths on the EF scale. Red circles indicate tornadoes being researched for this capstone. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
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STS Faculty Profile: Kyle Knight

STS Faculty Profile

Kyle Knight is Department Head and Professor of Sociology.

What’s your area of expertise? What do you primarily research and/or teach? And what drew you to this field?

I’m an environmental sociologist. I primarily research the human dimensions of environmental change, which includes the social causes, consequences, and responses to environmental problems. Besides introductory, statistics, and methods courses in sociology, I’ve also taught courses on environmental sociology, environmental justice, and society and climate change. My research has lately focused on social patterns in climate change public opinion. For example, my most recent publication examined how outdoor recreation, such as hiking and birdwatching, might foster greater concern for climate change. My initial interest in sociology was motivated by questioning the centrality of materialism and consumerism in our society, and that blossomed into a drive to understand how we might achieve a more sustainable and equitable future.

Photo by Josh Willink on Pexels.com

What’s one of your favorite courses, topics, or specific texts to teach? Why?

One book I’ve used in my classes for a while now is Andrew Szasz’s Shopping Our Way to Safety, which I think provides an excellent illustration of how treating systemic social problems as individual-level issues to be solved by consumers not only doesn’t solve these problems but actually makes them worse. One of the biggest challenges in teaching environmental sociology is to get across the point that environmental problems are, at their root, social problems, and this book usually does the trick.

What’s something you’ve done that you’re really proud of?

While working on my Ph.D. at Washington State University, I co-authored and published an article with a fellow sociology graduate student and we received a departmental award for it. It was at this moment that I began to feel like a real scholar, and I continue to be proud of the work we did on our own to make it happen.

Tell us about a book you’ve read recently, a movie you’ve seen recently, or another work of art or media you’ve engaged with recently that you really enjoyed and would like to recommend.

I am a big music nerd and love all kinds of genres and traditions. I listen to music all day long, especially while working in my office, and enjoy reading album reviews. My musical tastes run the gamut – some of my favorite musical artists lately are Jake Xerxes Fussell, Yasmin Williams, Madlib, Cassandra Jenkins, Ben Chasny, Julian Lage, and Protomartyr. Right now, I’m fascinated by Marina Herlop’s new album titled Pripyat, which is named after the Ukrainian city abandoned in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Herlop is a classical pianist and experimental producer from Barcelona, and this album creates a wordless, other-worldly soundscape that is just completely captivating. My favorite track is “Shaolin Mantis” but the choir version of “Miu” is a close runner-up.

Tell us something about yourself outside of work. What do you enjoy doing? What’s a detail about you that Mines students might not already know?

I’m pretty boring and just enjoy spending time with my family outside of work. We especially like to hike, camp, and ride bicycles. We’re very excited to get to know the Black Hills and to eventually ride the Mickelson Trail when it’s not so hot!

Planting Seeds: Anchoring Ethics in the Dirt

Classes, Environment, teaching

By Christy Tidwell

My Environmental Ethics & STEM class asks big questions about knowledge, values, justice, and responsibility – both individual and systemic – related to environmental issues. Although I try to situate these conversations in specific, real-world examples, they can still sometimes seem abstract or beyond the scale of my students’ reach. They may wonder what they can do to address climate change, for instance, or to change corporate policy.

But they can, of course, make a difference, and we look for ways to identify the actions they can take (again, not just individually but within larger contexts). In the meantime, to help connect us more fully to the environment, this semester I asked my students to plant seeds and to do their best to grow them and keep them alive. It’s my hope that working to protect and nurture one small plant will give the class a personal connection that issues of pollution, plastics, or water rights may not always have.

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