GOSHEN, Ind. – As a biology and environmental science professor, Ryan Sensenig knows that his students need to learn more than how to use a microscope or all of the scientific names of the plants they are studying.

Instead, creating connections – between people, cultures and different academic disciplines – has always been key to the way he has approached his own life and what he strives to teach everyday in the classroom. “There is no dividing line between sociology, biology, ecology and peace and justice issues,” said Sensenig, associate professor of biology at Goshen College. “I love ecology and environmental science because the complexity of connections forever intrigues me, and further binds me to a broader social and biological community.”

Sensenig’s interdisciplinary exploration began as a child in Kenya. Born to parents who were teaching and serving in the East African country, he enjoyed cross-cultural connections with his Kenyan brothers and sisters.

“One significant way to make peace is becoming a member of a community,” Sensenig said. His service at a refugee camp in conflict-ridden eastern Kenya in 1992 clearly demonstrated to him the connections between peace, poverty and ecology. After finishing his undergraduate degree as an international agriculture and biology double major at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), Sensenig was anxious to apply the multidisciplinary tools he acquired.

“I appreciated the connections between disciplines within my work,” he said. “Also there was a focus on rural development overseas as a part of my college study that took me back to Kenya.”

Sensenig initially began his service experience working with refugees reeling from a recent war. He helped distribute food to 50,000 refugees in three different desert camps.

Over time, Sensenig helped meet broader social needs in a larger region. With 150,000 refugees from different ethnic groups and language backgrounds, there was a need to create a community for these people to sustain peace and give meaning to their lives. Sensenig began a recreation program, organizing volleyball games, soccer games and art activities for the refugees.

Sensenig also responded to ecological concerns by establishing a tree-planting project. After the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) cut down hundreds of native acacia trees to create the camp, he and others organized a program to replant shade trees for the refugees and their animals.

“Many people understand the connection between war and the environment; during war the environment suffers due to habitat destruction and excessive exploitation,” Sensenig said. “But the reverse is also true. If the environment is unstable and ecological needs aren’t met, then peace suffers.”

Sensenig’s time in Kenya convinced him to pursue education to teach others about the importance of these connections. He taught high school ecology for six years in Harrisonburg, Va. “As an educator, I see part of my job as to encourage students (and myself) to dig deeply to find and unveil connections, which can help us understand our role in the larger community, locally and globally,” he said.

As a professor and director of the environmental science program at Goshen since 2007, Sensenig continues to bring lessons he learned in Kenya to the classroom and the campus. In his classes – General Ecology, Principles of Environmental Science, Marine Biology in the Florida Keys and Biological World – Sensenig sees his most important goal as demonstrating “ecological thinking,” the idea that any given thing is tied to a multitude of other things.

Sensenig collaborates with students, administrators and professors from other departments on the Ecological Stewardship Committee to make the campus more sustainable, including establishing prairie grass areas on campus. “These challenges are naturally interdisciplinary; solutions require social, economic and technical contributions,” Sensenig said.

And Sensenig is currently involved in two research projects focused on grassland systems. As the Lindsey Fellow at the college’s Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center, he has started a tall grass prairie grazing experiment to examine the effect of large herbivores on plant dynamics. And in Kenya’s Laikipia savanna, he is studying the important role grassland fires play in creating food variety for animals. That research was recently published in the journal Ecologyin November 2010.

While in Kenya where Sensenig pursued doctoral work in wildlife ecology, he and his wife, Donna, who also shares experiences growing up in East Africa, adopted their two children, Mara and Isaac, who are both now seven years old.

“Since we both were born in East Africa and have a high interest in staying connected to this part of the world, it felt somewhat natural to become a multi-ethnic family,” Sensenig said.

During the spring 2011 semester, Sensenig and his family are leading a group of Goshen College students to Tanzania through the Study-Service Term program. The family will then spend six weeks during the summer in Kenya where Sensenig will continue his grassland research data collection, along with four Goshen College students.

“I am trying to establish an intercultural tension within my kids,” he said. “This is part of what we should all do to feel global accountability and connection both to our home as well as to another community elsewhere in the world.”

– By Lydie Assefa

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu.

GOSHEN, Ind. – A small corner of the campus has started to turn greener thanks to a student proposal and the care and involvement of a professor and a utilities manager.

The south corner of campus is the first glimpse that northbound drivers on Main Street get and that view is improving as a new rolling prairie of a diversity of grasses and flowers are growing to replace the view of a flat turf grass area and community recycling bins. The seeds were planted last October, with some additional planting in June.

“Once a prairie is established, it needs periodic mowing or burning. But it doesn’t require much maintenance in the long run,” said Ryan Sensenig, assistant professor of biology. “And a prairie will never look the same from one year to the next over the coming 20 years. It’s a dynamic, changing process.”

The idea of creating a campus prairie began several years ago in Jerrell Ross Richer’s economics class as a group of students wrote a proposal for the college to save money and energy by developing more native prairie areas on campus. The college’s Environmental Stewardship Committee approved moving forward with changes on the plot behind Newcomer Center. Junior Alana Kenagy (Albany, Ore.), 2010 graduate Andy Brubaker (Goshen) and senior Jake Snyder (Leland, N.C.) worked with Sensenig to give leadership to the project and recruited help from EcoPAX Club members and ecology class students to help prepare the soil and plant the seed.

“The neat part about this is the way it has connected student initiative, physical plant management and the curriculum,” Sensenig said.

A key outcome of the project has been the connections it has nurtured between students, physical plant personnel and teaching faculty.

The prairie project was expanded to include a detention pond as well, which was added after grant funding from the Elkhart River Alliance became available and got Utility Manager and Sustainability Coordinator Glenn Gilbert involved. The detention pond will reduce excess water coming off surrounding parking lots from going into the nearby Elkhart River as quickly and cutting down on flooding.

One benefit of this is that “more and more water should infiltrate over time because of prairie grasses and improved permeability of the soil,” Sensenig said, noting that some areas have a high content of clay.

“By introducing the detention pond, it turned a homogeneous prairie into an area with different plants, because of the topography,” Gilbert said. As not to remove soil from the property when digging out the detention pond, a berm was built to hide the not so attractive recycling bins. “Our intention is to make it look intentional, not neglected,” Gilbert said.

The group used three prairie mixes which all included grasses and flowering plants, including a basic tallgrass prairie seed mix for the banks in the back, a swale mix for the wettest areas and a low profile mix which will cover the majority of the area and includes 30 flowering plants and shorter grasses.

As a student leader on the project, Kenagy said, “I am just really excited to see the land so transformed – shaping the land and planting a diversity of plants – to explore how it affects soil quality and other biological qualities of the area.”

Sensenig sees the way this project has connected disparate parts of campus in significant ways as an experiment in interdisciplinary learning.

“What has intrigued me about this project is that the act of participating in restoration of our landscape has forced us to re-evaluate the way we do education. How can we help students connect with the people and places around them?” he said. “To the degree that environmental problems are due to the disconnect we have in our lives, the solution has to do with how we reconnect. Restoration of our ‘place’ becomes not just a biological or technical pursuit, but a commitment to socially work in ways that are also restorative. This model of education excites me.

– By Jodi H. Beyeler

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college’s Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron’s Best Buys in Education, “Colleges of Distinction,” “Making a Difference College Guide” and U.S. News & World Report‘s “America’s Best Colleges” edition, which named Goshen a “least debt college.” Visit www.goshen.edu.