Andy Litteral
March's Sustainability Champion is Andy Litteral. Andy has taught 15 different courses in the Robins School of Business and has been at the University for 36 years. Read our full interview with him below to find out how sustainability influences the topics he teaches and the real-world data his students work with in his courses.
What kinds of courses do you teach?
I've mainly taught classes with a quantitative focus, so I've taught a lot on statistical methods, some MBA courses including the Executive MBA program, and I've taught the First Year Seminar (FYS) a few different times. Teaching the First Year Seminar has been engaging for the students and me. The two topics I've taught on have been "Water: Economics, Politics, and Policy" and "Chocolate: Food of the Gods".
How has sustainability factored into those courses?
Both of the First Year Seminar courses offer so many different opportunities to talk about sustainability. FYS classes give us the opportunity to explore a lot of facets of a single topic in depth.
In the Seminar on Chocolate, we talked a lot about the other end of the supply chain. So we looked into how the chocolate is harvested and made, and we talked in depth about sustainable practices for both the products and the employees throughout the whole process.
During the Seminar on Water, we looked at so many issues both locally and globally. In many class periods, one or two student groups gave presentations around an aspect of water and then our learning community discussed what they presented together. In that class, we got to talk about everything from the South China Sea to the James River. We also talked a lot about water rights, environmental justice, water pollution, climate change, and extreme weather events.
Outside of those First Year Seminar courses, I've also worked with Todd Lookingbill over in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies to have my classes analyze data that students in his classes have collected. Those data were messy, just as non-textbook data often appear.
Speaking of real-world data, can you tell us about the class you taught that worked with the on-campus solar array?
The solar array at the Weinstein Center was set up to be a living lab, with different kinds of inverters and solar panels on a couple different types of roofing. We looked at data from the solar array in a First Year Seminar class and in a Statistics class. It was a great opportunity for students to get to experience some messy data. In textbooks, data are not messy, and the problem often has a clear conclusion. But when you're working with real-world data, the conclusions aren't always so easy to make. Should we choose one type of solar panel over another all the time? The answer wasn't very clear after looking at the data; you could make a case for both, or better still, further investigation. In the end, students learned how to ask the relevant questions and how to deal with unexpected issues.
A lot of your classes involve a component of civic engagement. How did that start?
The increased emphasis on student learning all happened thanks to the Center for Civic Engagement. I attended a talk they hosted on environmental justice and I met Amy Howard at the event. I told her I was looking for data for a statistics class and she helped me connect with nonprofits for projects. Terry Dolson has also been very helpful, especially in helping me understand how to get students to learn what I want them to learn. Early in my career, I had the mindset that if I taught well and my students didn't learn, the fault was theirs. Now though, I know that if my students aren't learning, I need to teach differently. I'm very proud of how my teaching style has changed over the years so that I can use new resources as they become available and teach in a way that makes both me and my students responsible for their learning.
How would you like your students to use what they've learned about community engagement and sustainability when they leave the University?
I would like for my students' perspective and awareness to be broader. Majors narrow your focus in college, they're supposed to, but I would like my students to keep their eyes open to consider topics beyond a specific niche. Beyond that, I would really love for my students to tackle big problems and important questions. I want them to do more than just math. My hope is for them to look around their communities and identify issues, then take constructive action. Even if the problems don't affect them directly, my students should be able to recognize the privileges they have and step outside of that privileged environment to use their skills to help others.
Thank you, Andy, for all the work you do for our campus community! Do you know someone who should be featured as a Sustainability Champion? Let us know at sustainabilty@richmond.edu.