Help the Environment While Getting Your Department Message Out

On Monday, April 22, 2024, from 2:00 – 4:00 pm, Professor Chris Parker’s Creative Thinking course (CRTH), in collaboration with Campus Recreation, will produce the Earth Day Creative Carnival! At this time, Parker’s class is welcoming other students, clubs, departments, and venues on campus to have a table, tent, or activity or be a speaker for the Earth Day Creative Carnival.

Keeping with the environmental consciousness of the sixties, the Carnival will be having tie dying materials available at no cost to students and staff; what would be welcome here is a collaborator professor or students who would like to add learning about the art, the environment, or the history of tie-dying. Additionally, aromatic living plants are available to all participants. The Carnival invites instructors and students who want to add to the aromatic plant science.

“Campus Recreation is looking forward to collaborating with Professor Parker’s class this year. We did collaborate with his Creative Thinking class a few years ago with the First Ever Temporary Arts Festival,” said Tzu-Lin Toner, Assistant Director of Campus Recreation Programs. “Collaboration is the name of the game, and we look forward to other departments reaching out to us for their part in the Earth Day Creative Carnival. If you have other ideas, please get in touch with the Earth Day Creative Carnival. You can propose anything from a game to an activity or other knowledge access.”

The Creative Thinking class has entered a Challenge-based Learning collaboration with several other university classes. This event is part of this Creative Thinking class’ Challenge Based Learning initiative. The Creative Thinking’s Challenge Based Learning cooperates with Dr. David Axelrod’s economics courses, Classics Professor Jean Alvares’s concepts of Troy and the Trojan War, Stephanie Mayer Budget Analyst, Budget and Planning, and Rajoshree Bandyopadhyay, Instructional Specialist in Chemistry.

The thematic effort of this Earth Day Creative Carnival is the environment to support a permanent collaborative effort of the Challenge Based Learning group of classes mentioned above. This permanent project is the development of composting grinding machines, allowing students, guests, faculty, and staff to add composting material and grind the composing machine manually.
“We developed the composting machines project to blend the efforts and disciplines of all the courses in our particular Challenge Based Learning collaborative,” said Dr. David Axelrod, about the interdisciplinary effort.

According to Koen DePryck, PhD, Professor of Challenge Based Learning and Director Challenge Based Impact Lab, this Creative Thinking course and other collaboration courses introduce students to Challenge Based Learning (CBL). CBL is an educational framework integrating real-world challenges, stakeholder involvement, interdisciplinary studies, competence development, learner ownership, entrepreneurship, and genuine impact potential. Through traditional and innovative teaching formats, students experience CBL’s transformative potential, bridging academic learning and the contemporary labor market’s demand for creative thinking skills.

In this course, students will learn to utilize their creative thinking skills, grasp Challenge Based Learning’s core principles, analyze real-world challenges, collaborate across disciplines, engage with stakeholders, and develop 21st-century skills. They’ll take ownership of their learning, demonstrate initiative and entrepreneurial thinking, and design solutions with tangible impact in the real world.
“We are delighted to support the CBL projects of this cohort; they truly foster our educational objectives,” concluded DePryck.

Clubs, students, professors, and campus venues interested in being a part of the April 22 Earth Day Creative Carnival reach out to earthdaycreativecarnival@montclair.edu.