Paul Steury
K-12 Education Coordinator
Assistant Professor Sustainability and Environmental Education Department
B.A. in Sociology, Goshen College, 1988
M.S. in Outdoor Resources Management with emphasis in Environmental Education, Indiana University, 1997
Contact info
Office: Merry Lea
Phone: (260) 799-5869
E-mail: paulds@goshen.edu
How I became an environmental educator
I was living in Lake Hughes, California, as a case manager for men with autism who lived in the San Fernando Valley. Daily, I would leave my mountain home that had blue skies almost continuously and descend to the brown, smoggy skies of Los Angeles. It would leave me constantly fed up with a society that allowed the environment to degrade so much that you couldn't see the mountains due to pollution. I asked myself, "What can I do to change this life?"
My response was, "Teach the children and hopefully that generation can make the change." So I moved to Bloomington, IN, to acquire my degree.
There I taught at Hilltop Garden and Nature Center, getting kids excited about growing their own food. I also taught myself more about organic gardening and how to limit my personal impacts by raising a garden.
After that, I lived in the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, inside the Smoky Mountains National Park where I was the school program director. For two years, I hiked over 300 miles of trails and led a multitude of children and teachers on adventures in the park that has the greatest biodiversity of all the national parks in the U.S.
In 1999, I was offered the K-12 Education Director position at Merry Lea and have been here ever since, always learning more about how to excite and entice students; more about wild and medicinal plants of northern Indiana, more about how to “wow” the kids into being better stewards (I have two sons age 5 and 8), and more about the ways of educating “old dogs” to perform “new tricks!”
Ideas that matter to me
• Issue investigation
• Activism / education and diplomacy
• Stewardship
• Politics
• Local food, local economy
• Slow Food Movement
• Media and its power
• Definitions of citizenry, religion, spirituality
• Thinking
The classes I teach and how I teach them
I teach an undergraduate course called Field Experience in Environmental Biology (Biol 340), which many elementary education majors take. I also teach two graduate level courses – Principles of Environmental Education (ENED 520) and History and Issues of Environmental Education (ENED 525). All my classes have lots of discussion. We read about natural history, eco-philosophy and environmental issues and then we try to figure out how to teach them to people of all ages. Students gain practical experience teaching the groups who come to us for school field trips and on the psychology of community members.
Research Interests
• Education for sustainable development
• Environmental justice
• Pro-environmental behavior change
• What invigorates learning?
• Churches and climate change
• Environmental literacy
• Politics & religion and its effect on the environment
Readings I Recommend
• Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
• Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
• Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawkin
• Biomimicry by Janine M. Benyus
• Earth in Mind by David Orr
• Beyond Ecophobia by David Sobel
• Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays by Wendell Berry
• Our Choice by Al Gore
• Endgame by Derrick Jensen
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• Eaarth by Bill McKibben
• Orion Magazine
Documentary Movies I Recommend
• Inconvenient Truth
• No Impact Man
• The Age of Stupid
• The Real Dirt on Farmer John
• Waterlife
• Dirt • Earth Days
• Yes Men
• What’s On Your Plate?
Presentation topics
• Churches and Climate Change
• Environmental Literacy
• Do We Really Need GMOs?
• Wild Edibles of Northern Indiana
• Environmental Issues of Northern Indiana
• Sages in the Environmental World
I am actively involved in:
