The Freshwater Lab offers courses and an internship program for undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The interdisciplinary courses frame pressing issues around the Great Lakes watershed and empower students to examine and address them. Students venture out of the classroom for beach cleanups, toxic tours, and visits to significant sites of water and infrastructure. Researchers and community-based water leaders regularly visit as guest professors.

Students work on projects tackling real world problems and innovating in realms such as policy, planning, communication, and the arts.

Many Freshwater Lab alumni are leaders on water and environmental issues.

Join The Freshwater Lab!

UIC Fall Course

Crosslisted as English 452, Urban Planning and Policy 452, and Public Administration 452

The Freshwater Lab fall course is a project of the UIC Freshwater Lab, launched in 2015 through support from the Humanities Without Walls Initiative.  Rather than a traditional lecture course, it endeavors to put the pressing issues surrounding the Great Lakes and other watersheds before students in order to support their knowledge of the issues and their innovative approaches to addressing them.  In this Humanities “lab” setting, we study and discuss social and environmental dimensions of the Great Lakes, meet with leaders in the Great Lakes water sector, visit relevant Chicago area sites, and work individually and in groups on projects to advance existing initiatives and pioneer new approaches.  

The course investigates the many ways in which water interacts with socio-political systems, legal structures, cultural perceptions, and artistic visions.  Focus also falls on how race, class, and gender determine access to water, exposure to contamination, and participation in the institutions responsible for the region’s water.

The Freshwater Lab welcomes a full spectrum of viewpoints about the past, present, and future of the world’s most important freshwater system.  We approach several topics relating to the Great Lakes basin including:

Assets

Drinking water, transportation, international border, ecological wonder, commons, recreation, food source, sacred waters, energy, reuse, economic potential, real estate, industrial and agricultural use, cultural histories, personal memories.

Challenges

Pollution (non point/point source), lead pipes and water delivery, privatization, flooding, algal blooms/dead zones, erosion, water level fluctuation, deregulation, personal relationship, real estate/access, invasive species, diversions, energy, mining, sovereignty, environmental justice.

UIC Spring Course

English 453/Public Administration 453/Urban Planning and Policy 453

The Freshwater Lab in the spring course focuses on water governance and policy.  We study relevant water legislation in North America before focusing on the institutions, policies, and ideas relevant to governance of the Great Lakes.  Students engage with particular forms of water governance, advancing ideas about extension, improvement, and inclusion.

Over the course of the semester, students engage in one-on-one discussions about their goals.  Those who are interested are personally placed in a summer internship with a water or environmental organization and are eligible for an internship stipend.  Students who chose not to take on an internship complete an original project.