Professor
reveals passion
By
Kristen Wooley
Daily Forty Niner
Looking
around this tiny office with a view, it
is no question, with the piles of books
and writing pads, that this young, 37-year-old
idealist is an avid reader and writer.
Every
school day, George Hart, English professor
of two years at Cal State Long Beach, rides
his bicycle to the campus.
"I
live in Long Beach, so it's not that far,
but it's about three miles," Hart said.
"I just like to be able to ride."
Nature
is Hart's passion, nature and the literature
that engulfs nature. That is his baby at
the moment, his project, to design and teach
a course that incorporates hands-on environmental
learning with fiction, non-fiction and poetry,
in an environmental literature course.
This
relationship with nature and the writers
who capture it sprung from his teenage years
when he got involved with camping, hiking
and backpacking.
"This
summer I went to Sequoia National Park for
the first time. I spent three or four days
there and it was a beautiful trip. The high
mountain wildflowers were incredible,"
Hart said. He went on to say that one of
the authors he's reading actually wrote
some of the trail guides in the Sequoias,
so he got to do his thing which he enjoys
to do for recreation but there is also that
connection with some of the authors he is
interested in.
Colleague
and a friend, Tim Caron, had a few words
to say about Hart. "George Hart rocks!"
Caron shouted. Hart teases Caron. "He
doesn't like nature."
Caron
fired back, "He's a city boy, I'm a
country boy, hogs, chickens, pigs."
Hart continued, "No those things were
bread on a farm and things he just likes
to eat."
"I
love em" Caron said.
Finally
Caron revealed the mystery behind why George
Hart rocks.
"Great
colleague, great friend, super smart, great
teacher, enthusiastic, hard working. That's
about seven or eight things, but there's
more because he rocks," Caron said.
Hart
laughed as his promoter exited and began
his tale again. But Hart didn't really want
to talk about himself, he revealed later,
because he's not really important, it's
his excitement about what he calls a service
learning course.
"For
part of the course," Hart said, "students
will be providing conservations which will
involve 20 hours a week of hands-on activities.
They will be reading writers that have that
almost spiritual outlook on the environment
and they will be learning that we are constantly
surrounded by nature, so they can tune into
that and get aware of that and they can
realize there are things you can do wherever
you are."
Hart
was quick to answer the question of what
he loves about teaching.
"I
love the students," he said. "I
love being able to share with 20, 30, or
40 other people, and convey to them something
I'm passionate about, and ideally working
outside the classroom with them."
Hart explained his deeper passions
and devotions to nature.
"Just
the idea that nature and the environment
is this realm where you're in something
larger than yourself, you're in something
that is beyond human concern," he said.
"There is something out there that
you just don't get in a cultural environment."
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