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Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
Lead Faculty
Applied Ecopsychology

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Basic Requirements for Graduate Student Cooperative (GSC) membership in good standing

Contemporary Society has built insane asylums for many centuries. Today, if somebody built a SANE asylum, how many people do you know would be eligible for it?

Our undeclared war against nature around and within us makes most of us act crazy with respect to survival and living in peace. Like a child separated from its mother, we psychologically hurt and are angry. We want from the loss of Mother Nature in our lives. Emotionally injured, we are like zombies with respect to sensitively, rationally, knowing how to live harmoniously with diverse peoples and natural areas.

We need to engage in an effective nature connected process of relating, one that unifies on interpersonal and inter species levels. We must practice a balanced ecosystem way of thinking and building relationships. The IGE Graduate Student Cooperative helps us learn to do and teach this.

LEARNING BY DOING.

The 17 requirements listed below help implement NSTP, sustain the Cooperative and support your advanced degree program. The time and learning while doing them is applied towards fulfilling your coursework while you make inroads in places that need improvement. Knowing how to tie your shoe can be just as important as knowing how to read a complex hiking map if the goal is to be able to reach a new plateau.

1. The purpose of the Degree Program is to produce people who have expert working knowledge of Webstrings Science: The Natural Systems Thinking Process, an Applied Ecopsychology or Integrated Ecology.

The IGE Cooperative program is self-organized. It is based on following natural attractions and seeking permission from nature within and around yourself and in others. It is completely dependent on its participants communicating and being their word, moment by moment. It fails whenever this trust is broken.

If you have additional ideas or information that you feel should help define a Coop member in good standing, please contact the Coordinating Committee, GSC-ccc@egroups.com. If when you receive your Degree, you want to professionally become a part or full time program coordinator or associated University faculty member learn how to become one by joining and participating in this Committe's functions. It helps participants and institutions utilize the 17 points on this page to their greatest advantage. The key documents that serve this purpose are:

1. Student Cooperative Payment Form for explaining and recording financial transactions guformpay.html

2. General Contract Multipurpose form for affirming contracts made between Co-op members regarding coursework, internships, field work, payments and independent study. guformcontract.html

CONTENTS:

Members in good standing can act and respond to the following questions. Answers are located below (If links don't work.)

1. What is the purpose of the Degree Program?

2. Where do we send our Quarterly Progress Reports?

3. What two communication lists OUTSIDE of GSC should each member be registered with?

4. When do you take your Comprehensive examination?

5. Before submitting any work (waivers, course equivalency petitions, course papers, thesis, etc.) to Mike Cohen or other faculty member, what needs to be done?

6. What science magazine should all GSC members subscribe to?

7. What material should we save for inclusion in our course and thesis Reference Lists?

8. How do we practice thinking with NSTP?

9. Where do we find descriptions of the degree courses?

10. What kind of local organization should we be a member of?

11. What list of Key Questions should be reviewed and answered during the Degree Program?

12. What Key Web pages should all GSC participants have a working knowledge of?

13. What function does our personal Support Group have? Where do we send our updates or news?

14. How do we create our IGE Student Website and what information do we include on it?

15. By what means does IGE make electronic tuition and other payments possible?

16. What GSC Checklist should be reviewed and updated during the Degree Program?

17. When should you take the required public relations course?

Requirements:

2. Quarterly Progress Reports: In order for the GSC to be officially aware of your enrollment, email a Quarterly Progress Report (found at http://www.ecopsych.com/appformprogress.html) at the midway point and end of each semester you are enrolled in. When enrolled at the IGE, email copies of your reports to Mike Cohen (nature@pacificrim.net) and your Guidegroups. [When you finish at Greenwich, email copies to Mike Cohen and Greenwich (registrar@university.edu.nf) ].

3. Communication Lists: Be sure you are on the PNC Professional Group email list (via nature@ipa.net, send Chuck McClintock the address you want to use) and the NatureConnect Discussion list ( http://www.ecopsych.com/~nature/list.html ). Note that you can sign up to get the daily digest form of these lists rather than individual letters, which considerably cuts down the amount of mail you receive. Emails for the PNC Professional Group should be sent to natureconnect-professional@egroups.com. Emails to the entire GSC should be sent to pnc-GSC@egroups.com.

4. Comprehensive Examination Questions: Since the GSC program is self-organizing, each participant is required to help maintain quality NSTP education. As you discover interesting and important points about NSTP, please turn them into valid questions that we can ask of ourselves and each other as an ongoing process and in the Comprehensive Examinations. This familiarizes you with the exam questions before you take the exam. Send the questions to the entire GSC as they come to mind via the newsletter.

Collect Case Histories: What person had what problems and why? How did NSTP help resolve them and what were the dynamics?

5. Submitting Work: The work you do in meeting course requirements (papers, projects, waivers, etc.) is also used to fulfill the reading and learning requirements for all Degree students. Your experiences and thinking becomes a textbook for others; it helps them learn and know what you have learned. Before submitting any work (waivers, course equivalency petitions, course papers, thesis, etc.) to Mike Cohen as a faculty member, be sure it has been read, commented upon and modified if necessary by members of your personal Support Group and/or a committee of three or more students who consent to review your work and help you improve it. We may set up an archive of such work so that all can learn from them. Whenever possible you should have your papers and other work available at your personal website.

6. Science News: Because NSTP is a Webstring Science that is active throughout nature, students are asked to keep up with what is happening in the fields of science and how it affects or explains webstrings. A subscription to Science News serves this purpose well (see http://www.sciencenews.org/). Many discoveries in science are actually discoveries about how webstring attractions are working in other species and the mineral kingdom.

7. Reference Material: Save your own and other course postings so that you may refer to them as self-evidence and include them in your course and thesis Reference Lists and use them in your papers.

8 Thinking with NSTP: Except when you are unconscious, there is no time that you are not registering one or more natural attraction webstrings. Continually practice converting your senses and feelings into webstrings and note when and why they are active and how they interact.

9. Course Descriptions and Updates: Please note that course descriptions and their updates are available by placing http://www.ecopsych.com/ before the course code number (e.g., eco522) and .html after the code (e.g., http://www.ecopsych.com/eco522.html). Updates will come from discoveries that GSC participants make and that increase program excellence, such as a new book, activity, etc. Updates will be **starred.**

10. Local Environmental Organization Active Membership: GSC participants learn about how they can help solve environmental problems by being active members of a local environmental organization. Here you can also contribute, practice and teach NSTP to interested parties.

11. Key Questions: GSC participants learn about the NSTP by reviewing and answering the Key Questions found at http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grglobal.html. You should be able, in time, to answer these questions and add new questions that are helpful.

12. Working Knowledge of Key Webpages: You will want to have an active working knowledge of the material presented and linked to the IGE-IUPS home page

13. Guide Groups and Newsletter: You should be in touch with the members of your personal Guide Group (see http://www.ecopsych.com/ecogrouplists2002) as soon as you join the GSC and continue communications as necessary for support, to answer questions about the Degree Program before asking Mike Cohen, and for review and input on all course work papers. Send your personal updates or news to your guide groups as well as to the GSC communication list: pnc-GSC@egroups.com.

14 IGE Student Website: Each GSC participant creates their own IGE Student Website. See http://www.xxxx for instructions on creating your site (http://YourAddress.Homestead.com) and the information to include on it.

15. Join PayPal..com to electronically facilitate the transference of funds and payments when necessary

16. GSC Checklist: The following steps are part of Cooperative participation and are to be performed in order to be considered a member in good standing.

A. Biography and Goals Statement. To help all Cooperative participants get to know each other better and find common interests, each person writes a short biographical and goals statement and saves it on their IGE Student Website. As new student scome into the program their statements will appear in the newsletter.

B. Course Contracts. Each GSC participant fills out a contract for each semesters courses they will enrolled, shares them for input from their study group, saves them on their IGE Student Website

C. Log-Journal. Because the courses require a defined number of hours per credit (45), students keep a log of the date and number of hours spent in course activities, including co-facilitating, the course or subject they might apply the hours to, and thoughts and feelings about the experience. This is very important as it serves as documentation of your coursework if it is challenged in the future.

Please be aware of the total hours (below) that must be spent in coursework towards your degree (minus the hours transferred in from equivalent education.)

Ph.D. 2280 hours, about 3 hours per day for 2-3 years
M.S. 1920 hours, about 2.5 hours per day for 2 years

Keep in mind that you can take a leave of absence from the program,

D Telephone Call(s). To help participants become more intimately acquainted with IGE-IUPS, at least one introductory phone call to Mike Cohen is required (360-378-6313).

17. Public Relations: In order to help GSC meet its work-study financial aid goal for its participants, all GSC members are asked to begin the Public Relations course at their earliest convenience after they are officially accepted in GSC and have completed the GSC Application and Orientation Course ECO500. Please let the public education coordinator know of organization or other contacts you have that might be interested in learning about the program and your work in it.

In order to intern in courses we need students in the courses. We also need student tuition to help pay scholarship subsidies. Actively creative public education for making public contact whenever possible. If you find additional ways to develop interest, let the Cooperative know about them. See ecopublicity.html.

GSC Public Relations Basics:
ECO 522 3 credits 135 hours
Select Here

Project NatureConnect
Institute of Global Education
Special NGO consultant to United Nations Economic and Social Council.
P.O. Box 1605 Friday Harbor WA 98250
(360) 378-6313
nature@interisland.net
www.ecopsych.com

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