Environmentality & Sustainability - Week 1

I had my first Disney Seminar Class this afternoon, Environmentality & Sustainability. For those of you who know me, this class is perfect for me because it combines environmental science, animal care, recycling, marine biology, and many other environmental/biological topics into one 8 week course taught and led by Disney facilitators. My class meets every Thursday afternoon for the next 8 weeks. The majority of the time, we meet in a classroom and have guest speakers join us for the class period, however, we do have 3 field trips scheduled, one to Animal Kingdom and two to Epcot.

Lesson Plans for Environmentality & Sustainability

This course should provide me with plenty of opportunities to network and gain insight into the way Disney handles their animals and the surrounding environment. 

In the first class, we learned about our instructor, Jeff. Like me, he started out on the College Program and has since bounced around the company working in many different areas until he landed his current position on the Education team. From there, we talked about the expectations for the course, went over the week by week plan, and then began to discuss how the Walt Disney Company first took its interest in sustainability and conservation. I learned that Walt had always been interested in the environment, as evidenced by one of his first animated features, Bambi. 

After Bambi, Walt and Roy ventured on to try out their live action documentaries, True Life Adventures. They used live footage of animals and different ecosystems and won several Academy Awards for their work. 

We also discussed how out of the 47 square miles of the Walt Disney World Resort, 1/3 of that land has been set aside for Disney Wildlife Preservation, and this was Walt's intention all along. This course is truly fascinating, especially for someone like me, who is so interested in the environmental science field. 

I'm looking forward to the next couple of weeks in my course and all of the new information I will learn, people I will meet, and connections I will make. I'll definitely keep everyone updated on my progress in the course, and please, if you have any specific questions, let me know!