Permaculture course inspires career changes

Graduate student Sara Brooks’ life was transformed after taking a two-week summer course in permaculture.

But she isn’t the only one.

Since its inception eight years ago, the camping course based on sustaining human activity has created quite a stir in Bloomington. It has inspired students to change majors, reverse career goals and even create an extension of the course, the Bloomington Permaculture Guild.

“It drastically changed my life,” Brooks said. “I became more aware of the resources that I use and started observing things in my daily life that I could completely change.”

The three-credit course runs from June 6 to 20 and brings students to the Lazy Black Bear Retreat Center in Paoli, Ind., deep in the Hoosier National Forest. 

“Permaculture is a holistic design strategy for creating sustainable human communities in harmony with a particular natural environment,” course professor David Haberman said.

During the class, students practice permaculture in the forest and work on projects designing sustainable systems, such as making the center’s shower facility energy independent.

Haberman is the brains and brawn behind the course and said he brought it to IU after being interested in permaculture for 10 years.

He said permaculture is not just about food production, which many people think, but also about buildings, energy supplies, artistic expression and spiritual satisfaction. It’s about designing human communities with those environmentally conscious ideas in mind.

“I thought, ‘This is exactly what college students should be learning,’” Haberman said. “It provides vital skills students will need in the future.”

Twenty-five students are accepted and spend the course sleeping in tents, studying nature, swimming and sharing stories around the campfire, Haberman said.

“I encourage them to check out of their normal world so they think intensively and really communicate,” he said. “The level of community that is created among the students is amazing.”

Haberman said students become certified in permaculture at the end of the session, which enables them to create their own permaculture design systems. Many students not only incorporate it into their daily lives, but make it a career, he said.

Course teacher Rhonda Baird agreed.

Baird took the class as an IU graduate student in 2005 and has since dedicated her life to learning about and teaching permaculture concepts.

“If you read the news about climate change and pollution, you can get really depressed,” Baird said. “Permaculture really says, ‘Yes, these things are true, and yes, we need to deal with them, but in doing that we will all come to a better place.’ In this way permaculture really appeals to me.”

Students who complete the course are invited to join the Bloomington Permaculture Guild, a society created to provide course graduates with an outlet to share ideas and continue their work.

“It can be viewed as a concrete course, but for many students it’s not,” Baird said. “They come back and join the Bloomington permaculture community, and it’s almost like a support group for people when they come back.”

Haberman stressed the real-world application of the course is solving environmental problems that plague this generation.

“This is about not facing the future with doom and gloom but facing it with joy,” she said.