House Seminar Experience

Green House seminars are part of a solution-oriented learning community that focuses on sustainability, adventure, leadership, and applied research. Students, faculty and community members work together to understand and solve problems through investigation, collaboration, and action. We explore opportunities to make a sustainable difference in our community, state, country, and the world. Typically, Green House learners are driven to create positive change and apply their interests in business, art, leadership, environmental science, philosophy or other disciplines to the context of sustainability.

Green House learning adventures are not limited to the classroom. Learning takes place on the SOU campus, on Mt. Ashland, at local farms and businesses, along the Rogue River, throughout our watershed, and in collaboration with the SOU Center for Sustainability and The Farm. Green House students care about designing sustainable communities and building friendships with great people who are equally committed to a sustainable and just future.

Skeptic House seminars welcome learners from all fields of study, preparing them for synthesizing and communicating complex ideas that require accomplished critical thought. Students, faculty, and community members partner to explore contentious contemporary issues. Skeptic House seminars guide learners towards the intellectual confidence to reason well and to make solid ethical and fact-based decisions in whatever context their lives and careers encounter. In the Skeptic House seminars, learners develop the skills and dispositions to work on issues they are passionate about and to share their message with their intended audiences in a persuasive and trustworthy manner.

Skeptic House seminars encourage learners to cultivate leadership dispositions and advocacy skills, to take on complex ideas and challenges, and to apply personal passions to work toward a better, more informed world. Is it worth buying a hybrid car? Paper or plastic? Are immunizations safe? Are organic foods healthier? Are smartphones detrimental to our social lives? We are drowning in claims to persuade us on these issues and many more in this post-internet age. Social media, news media, and mazes of electronic connections mean being constantly awash in good, useful information and bad, misleading information. Skeptic House seminars help learners navigate the choices that confront us all now or in the future, including those choices in careers that may not yet exist.