Student-Faculty Rivers Study Group Holds First Discussion
By Vivienne Mockenhaupt ’27
On Tuesday, October 20, a student-faculty study group affiliated with Milton’s new Center for Environment and Economy met in Straus Library for the very first time to discuss a central question: what is a river?, through analyzing James C. Scott’s In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life it Brings. The twenty-five students and faculty brought diverse perspectives and knowledge from different disciplines to tackle this question, whether environmental, economic, philosophical, ethical, geological, or more.
As Head of School Dr. Alixe Callen unveiled at Monday’s Upper School Meeting, Milton’s latest strategic plan involves the establishment of three interdisciplinary education centers, including the Center for Environment and Economy. As was written in an iteration of its mission statement from the 2025-2026 school year, this center “is a hub of learning, imagining, and community that nurtures students’ interest in the environment understood as both nature and society: the environment, our environment.” It aims to ask the following questions, among others: “What is human responsibility in a more-than-human world? What past brought us to this present, and what future do we want? What is valuable, what is possible? What drives change—individuals, movements, markets, states?”
Dr. Katharine Holt and Mr. Trevor Margraf of the English Department and Ms. Hannah Antonellis of the History Department started organizing this study group last spring. As Dr. Holt explained, the first ideas for the group began from multiple years of teaching Literature and the Environmental Humanities alongside Mr. Margraf. She explained how “in that course we read several texts that thematically centered commodity flows and also water networks,” an experience which proved generative for ideas for a new course. However, as the two of them concluded that they would need more time in order to run an entire new class, they decided instead to run a new study group which could incorporate a wide variety of other disciplines.
The first meeting was held in Straus and, including the organizers, a total of twenty-five people attended, enough that the group had to change venues from the downstairs Straus conference room to the larger library. They began by discussing and dissecting this week’s reading—a selection from James C. Scott’s book In Praise of Floods—by first attempting to reconstruct the argument of the text, analyze it, then possibly critique it.
As the student and faculty attendees talked, they moved from discussing the very definition of a river to asking questions such as the potential existence of an “ethics of a river.” As Joe Jia ’27 stated, “The focus on morality and ethics towards the end of our meeting was the most interesting, and perhaps to me critical, part of the discussion. I found it exciting to witness other people’s perspectives and personal experiences voiced through those perspectives and at the same time create common ground, spoken or not.”
Students additionally remarked on the engagement of their peers and the faculty members in attendance. As Harris Felix ’27 said, “The fact that everyone has chosen to be there makes the environment much more engaging and dynamic as opposed to a class where some students may not want to be there perhaps because it is required or was not their first choice of class.” Dr. Holt concurred: “We were delighted by the enthusiasm in the room, the number of attendees, and the tenor of the conversation… Maybe we went meandering a bit, but what a wonderful group to meander with!” Felix also noted the unique experience of working alongside Milton faculty rather than in a hierarchical system set up by such structures as grading or the typical organization of a Milton classroom.
The ultimate output of this study group—the creation of a new course—may take a variety of different forms. Another Milton center, the Center for Humans and Technology, has brought forth the current half-course Moral Decision Making and AI: Programming Ethics, co-taught by English teacher Ms. Nicole Colson and Computer Science teacher Mr. Chris Hales; the course on rivers could potentially take this form. Additionally, as Dr. Holt explains, the course could instead be two separate courses, one in the English Department and one in the Science Department, which would give students the option to take both in tandem for an even more intellectually enriching experience. While the first meeting of the study group did not discuss plans for next year in great detail, future meetings are likely to incorporate a greater focus on course planning looking ahead.
This study group will continue to meet monthly throughout the school year, discussing such disciplines as geology, landscape architecture, literature, and more over the course of the coming semester, with more topics for the spring semester to be determined.