Inequality and Superfund sites: Using backward design, cooperative learning, and data integration in introductory environmental economics

Abstract

Environmental justice is an important topic that can be better understood by using the tools of economics. The author of this article describes a data integration exercise that connects data available through government portals: the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Superfund Sites Where You Live” interactive map, data on Net Present Values from Superfund Records of Decisions (ROD), and FRED. Created with the principles of backward design, the exercise uses cooperative learning by having students take ownership of sites chosen for investigation, as well as build and test hypotheses regarding the relationship between per capita GDP and site location/cleanup cost.

Keywords:

• Backward design
• classroom data integration
• GDP per capita
• Superfund
• team-based learning

JEL CODES:

• A22
• E01
• Q52
• Q58

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the organizers and fellow participants of the American Economic Association’s first EDUCATE cohort, particularly Drs. Gerald Daniels and KimMarie McGoldrick for their guidance in developing the exercise.

IRB statement

This project received an exemption from Northern Illinois University’s Institutional Review Board on 11/19/2021 (Protocol #HS22-0167).

Notes

1 When the class meets in person, students are asked to progressively line up around the room and count off into teams. To ensure some diversity in viewpoints, first, students of a particular major are asked to line up (the dominant major in this course was Environmental Studies), and then, additional students are asked to join the line according to other characteristics, such as class year, minor, and place of origin.

2 For instance, throughout the semester, students would read a chapter of the textbook ahead of time, take a “Readiness Assessment Quiz” individually, and then repeat the quiz with their teams. This is a staple of TBL courses (see http://www.teambasedlearning.org/definition/ for further details).

3 Educators interested in adopting TBL will find Ruder, Maier, and Simkins (2021) and Clerici-Arias (2021) especially useful.

4 https://www.niu.edu/at-a-glance/index.shtml (accessed July 3, 2023).

5 As mentioned earlier, students in fall 2021 also completed a pre-survey, which served as the consent form for student responses to be used in pedagogical research, and as a baseline assessment of some knowledge and attitudes regarding inequality and environmental justice.

6 Detailed instructions and worksheets, as well as the NPV spreadsheet, are available upon request.

7 This is a score from 0–100 that denotes the difficulty of the site contamination and the risk it poses to those nearby. Students were told they could read more about the HRS at https://www.epa.gov/superfund/hazard-ranking-system-hrs.

8 Changing writers after each question is another possibility, but it does slow down the work and can lead to student confusion about whose turn it is.