This will be emeritus professor Don Zobel’s first full year of retirement after a 56-year career in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. For 27 of those years (1997-2024), he also taught in the Honors College, leading courses for almost the entirety of the college’s 30-year history and helping define, through his interdisciplinary approach, the unique value of the honors curricular experience.
Zobel’s research was in forest ecology in the Pacific Northwest, Taiwan and the Himalayan region of India and Nepal, and his experience inspired his first honors colloquium in 1997, Ecology and Environmental Quality in Himalaya. “In the early 1980s, I was planning a sabbatical and came across a teaching opportunity in Nepal,” he shares. “In Nepal at that time, nobody was doing the kind of work I specialized in, so I saw this opportunity as a chance to go learn something new.” He received a Fulbright award and taught in Nepal for 10 months, an experience that led to further research in the region between 1991 and 2000.
“I’ve received invitations to go back since then, but after 2000 I could no longer travel there,” says Zobel. “Teaching the honors colloquium was a really nice way to continue my professional involvement and keep engaging with students.”
Over the years, conditions in the region have evolved significantly, and Zobel saw his teaching as an opportunity to help students understand these changes. “The fact that I had experience in Himalaya back then, and pictures showing how it was before people had such an impact — I think that’s a valuable thing for students to see,” Zobel says. Through his colloquium, he encouraged students to analyze the region’s environmental challenges. “‘What are people doing that is causing problems?’ I asked. ‘What do experts think of these problems, and what is being done to address them?’ Students had to select an environmental issue affecting the region, then propose and defend a solution.”
Zobel expanded his teaching to Pacific Northwest ecology through a second colloquium inspired by his ongoing research on Mount St. Helens, where he has tracked vegetation recovery since the mountain’s 1980 eruption. “I started that colloquium in 2005, on the 25th anniversary of the eruption,” Zobel says. “After that I taught the course every five years.”
Zobel incorporated literature and science into the course, a cross-disciplinary approach he explored further in his third honors colloquium, Poetry and Landscape. “In the St. Helens course, we read a pair of poems written by one Oregonian author pre- and post-eruption that reflected changes in the mountain and in the author himself,” Zobel describes. “Works such as these are highly effective tools for conveying ecology, particularly in ways that resonate with a broad human audience beyond the scope of the professional field.” Zobel leveraged this idea in Poetry and Landscape, asking students to read, share and discuss poetry reflecting Northwest ecosystems before heading into the field themselves. The class culminated in a visit to Finley Wildlife Refuge, where students could see ecological concepts in action and craft poetry of their own. “Many of the poets we explored are also excellent ecologists,” Zobel says. “Their work keenly describes ecological phenomena and offers a platform from which to teach students about many key concepts. We studied ecology and poetry together this way — understanding one helped students understand the other.”
Field trips are central to Zobel’s teaching philosophy. “Through field trips I could literally say, ‘Look where we’re living!’ I wanted students to recognize what made a landscape unique and glorious and to keep thinking about it long after they left. Developing a sense of place — connecting with and understanding their surroundings — was something I could offer even to those without an ecology background.”
Zobel advocates for eliminating student fees associated with field trips and expresses appreciation for the Honors College scholarships available to cover experiential learning costs for students with financial need. The opportunity for diverse students to engage with these topics is, in his view, one of the most gratifying aspects of teaching. “I think it’s great that there are no prerequisites for these classes, so that any honors student can participate,” he says. “It creates a classroom filled with diverse perspectives and provides students with opportunities to widen their experience.”
Experience that transcends boundaries is one of the Honors College main values and has guided curriculum in the HC since its founding 30 years ago. Zobel’s honors colloquium courses centered this value by combining deep expertise, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural experience with an openness to collaboration and new ideas.
By Ana Tracy, HC Student Writer