Far from the bustle of Columbia’s campus, a group of undergraduate students in degree programs managed by the Climate School Office of Undergraduate Programs recently journeyed to Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, to explore sustainability through lived experience.
The Cuttyhunk Practicum, which began in 2024 as a partnership between Columbia and Barnard professors Jason Smerdon and Sandra Goldmark and the Gull Island Institute’s Classroom-To-Island initiative, offers sustainable development students a hands-on opportunity to examine what it means to inhabit a place well.
Designed to fulfill the program’s one-credit practicum requirement, the course invites students to explore sustainability at a local scale by spending three immersive days on Cuttyhunk Island, a small community off the coast of Massachusetts. “Sustainability is an applied problem,” said Smerdon, “and it is critical that we allow students to engage place-based learning as a means of understanding how local challenges and opportunities ultimately define specific sustainability pathways in a given location or community.”
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Slide 1: Group photo on the Cuttyhunk Ferry
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Slide 2: Work crew off to the beach and oyster farm
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Slide 3: Students on the utility raft at the oyster farm
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Slide 4: Beach clean up crew
