The Tuholske Institute for Environmental Field Studies
Overview
The Tuholske Institute for Environmental Field Studies, established in 2021, promotes place-based learning where law, nature, and people meet.
The institute honors the late Vermont Law and Graduate School professor Jack Tuholske, a leading public-interest environmental lawyer. Tuholske inspired an entire generation of environmental lawyers, and his brilliance in the courtroom left a legacy of protection for the wildlands he loved.
An initiative of Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Environmental Law Center, the institute’s experiential education opportunities equip students to advance environmental protection. Field courses across the world enhance students’ cultural competence and understanding of racial and socioeconomic disparities in environmental benefits and harms, diversify their learning experience through exposure to different landscapes and practitioner perspectives, and provide training for hands-on knowledge of natural resources. The institute also advances scholarship, dialogue, and best practices related to the role of field study curriculum in law school, promoting place-based education across institutions.
With years of experience teaching students in unusual locations beyond the classroom—from deep in the wilderness to the negotiating rooms of international climate conferences—VLGS’s Environmental Law Center established the Tuholske Institute of Environmental Field Studies to strengthen and expand our offerings.
The institute oversees courses in several different formats, including weekend intensives, Thanksgiving and Spring Break trips, and summer field courses lasting several weeks. Learn more about our current field study courses below.
Curriculum
Montana Field Study in Public Lands Management
Using a hands-on approach, the field seminar Public Lands Management takes place during the summer each year in Montana. Students travel to Missoula, home to the headquarters of the Northern Region of the National Forest System, the Lolo National Forest, and the University of Montana School of Forestry. There, they spend two weeks immersed in the realities of public land management while hiking into the wilderness, exploring a roadless area whose management fate is undecided, and visiting restoration logging sites, among other experiential education opportunities.
Our students don’t just read endless NEPA cases about the logging debate. Rather, they discuss forest management sitting amid a 600-acre clearcut, pondering hundreds of square miles of Forest Service lands, a visual patchwork of old harvests, vigorous newly regenerated stands, burned areas, a web-like network of roads, and vast swaths of potential new wilderness areas.
This course explores themes of resource utilization versus preservation, the changing legal framework for public land management, current controversies over salvage logging, motorized vehicle use, conflicts between wildlife management and recreationists, ecosystem restoration, the role of fire on public lands, and the impacts of climate change.
“The Montana Field Course was pivotal to my decision to go into conservation law, preserving and restoring working and natural lands where I’m from in northern California. I came into the course with an excellent legal education and more than a decade working in public service, but the field course allowed me to connect the dots between the work I love and places I love. I could be a lawyer and wear hiking boots to work. I could be a lawyer and go outside sometimes. I could be a lawyer and bring people together for a common solution. It was challenging, but I came away from it more centered and self-aware, and ready to forge my own path. A decade on, I’m still figuring the whole career thing out, but I now have the confidence to do it on my own terms. Also, I learned to shut up and not fill the silence.” – Steph Tavares-Buhler JD/MELP ’13
Cuba Field Study in Global Sustainability
The course Global Sustainability Field Study gives students a chance to travel to Cuba to study agriculture and sustainable energy in the field. The eight-day trip is offered by Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment (IEE), which has been building connections for years with Cuban academics and advocates focused on sustainable energy.
Students attend lectures from the president of CubaSolar (a national renewable energy nonprofit), officials at the Cuban governmental organization CubaEnergia, and professors from the University of Havana. They also mingle with Cuban students and tour the region—from a Cuban biodigester farm visit in the province of Pinar del Rio to Hemingway’s former home in the Havana suburbs, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, and the stunning, newly-renovated Cuban Capitol Building. Since the trip takes place over Thanksgiving break, they even get a chance to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner on a sustainable Cuban farm.
“Visiting Finca Marta farm on Thanksgiving was my personal highlight. Witnessing an operation that aims to work with natural systems rather than control them, and having an excellent presenter explain their philosophy, gave me a fresh perspective on what we should all value and be thankful for” – Gordon Merrick JD/MFALP ’20
UN Climate Change Conference
A select group of Vermont Law and Graduate School students participates in an annual International Climate Law course that takes them to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the COP Conference, held in a different country each year.
The Paris Agreement signaled the beginning of a new, universal approach to combating climate change, and negotiations continue. Through tracking negotiations and working on interdisciplinary, client-driven research projects, this course provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental issues, negotiation process, and political dynamics of the international climate regime. Students look at the advantages and disadvantages of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement while supporting a small island state during the climate negotiations.
“This class opened my eyes to how different nations approach dialogue, the intention behind these positions…and the depth of knowledge one needs to be successful in international climate negotiations.” – Mitul Patel JD/MERL ’21
Student delegates contribute to the development of international climate policy and inform the ongoing process of building out a framework for operationalizing commitments under the Paris Agreement.
To learn more, visit the students’ blog.
Southeast Asia Field Study in Environmental Governance in the Developing World
Following an eight-week Vermont Law and Graduate School course on Environmental Governance in the Developing World, students have the opportunity to see their classroom knowledge come to life while spending two weeks traveling through Cambodia, Vietnam, and/or Myanmar.
The U.S.-based section of the course focuses on issues facing both Southeast Asia and China, including the Belt and Road Initiative, Environmental Impact Assessments in Southeast Asia, regional cooperation within the Mekong River region, and environmental governance within China. The optional field study component allows students to observe firsthand the process and the challenges of implementing strong environmental governance in Southeast Asia. Trips include visits to local law firms and NGOs, visiting with indigenous communities affected by land concessions and land grabs, and forest hikes through some of the most remote and biodiverse habitats in Southeast Asia.
“This trip was an invaluable opportunity to not only see environmental governance in action but also to engage directly with local peoples about the issues they are facing. I would recommend this opportunity to anyone, and if I could, I would go back in a heartbeat.” – William Northrop JD/MELP ’20
Utah Field Study in Public Lands Governance
Each year during spring break, professor Hillary Hoffmann leads a trip to visit public lands in Utah. Students spend a week diving into the federal laws governing public lands. They learn about statutes such as the National Park Service Organic Act, the Antiquities Act, the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act, as well as significant tribal treaty rights, and other legally protected tribal interests in federal lands. They learn how to apply relevant legal principles to public lands and tribal rights during field workshops.
Classes include hikes in Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and the Bears Ears National Monument, while guest lectures from attorneys, grassroots advocates, and tribal representatives illuminate the issues.
“Teaching students about the adverse impacts of oil and gas leasing in the classroom is not nearly as informative as discussing the same material while standing next to a well pad, listening to the incessant droning of the rig equipment, and watching the giant tractor-trailer trucks fill up their tanks,” said Professor Hoffmann. “Taking students to an active oil well also helps them see exactly what can happen to fragile desert soils, critical habitat for endangered species like desert tortoises, and ancestral Puebloan burial grounds and archaeological sites if Congress or the President removes their legal protections.”
“Visiting an oil well, as much of an eyesore as it was, actually ended up being an incredibly eye-opening experience. I want to do something about it now.” – Alicia Follrod JD ’19
Vermont Field Study in Ecology
For students seeking to explore the ecological dimensions of environmental law, there is no better classroom than Vermont Law and Graduate School’s backyard. Field courses venture out into the forests and hills of Vermont during summertime to learn about ecology, forestry, and more.
This two-week, field-based course Ecology: Principles and Applications at the Landscape Level provides aspiring environmental professionals with a solid introduction to the science behind biodiversity conservation, natural resource management, and other issues in the context of increasing climate instability.
Rather than relying on textbook examples of ecological concepts, students spend time exploring the White River and Ottauquechee River watersheds, learning an ecological approach to landscape assessment that stresses inventorying the biotic and physical components (pieces), how these pieces are distributed in the landscape (patterns), and what forces drive these patterns (processes). They interpret the history of how the landscapes we see today have unfolded through time—from their origins to the impacts of European settlement and 20th-century land use—while also looking to the future of the landscape by exploring strategies for maintenance and restoration.
The intensive course Forest Policy and Law in New England at VLGS introduces students to the significant issues affecting forests and forest management in the region, including the management of forests on private and public lands, forest fragmentation and biodiversity loss, the impact of invasive species, recreational and other evolving forest uses, and the implications and impact of climate change. During both classroom time and visits to local forest sites, students study land use regulations, incentives and taxation (current use), timber sales, marketing and import/export restrictions, wildlife management, and tourism.
The one-credit summer weekend course Conservation Agriculture Policy examines state and federal conservation agriculture policies. Students are exposed to a variety of state and federal conservation programs designed to assist farmers in achieving conservation compliance. Through farm site visits, students see specific types of conservation practices implemented by farmers to protect natural resources and increase air, water, and soil quality on-and off-farm.
Faculty Resources
The Tuholske Institute for Environmental Field Studies is building a collection of resources for environmental law faculty who want to create or strengthen their field course offerings.
Field Course Liability Release Form
Developed by Vermont Law School’s Tuholske Institute for Environmental Field Studies, this Assumption of Risk and Release of Liability Agreement helps to mitigate field course risk and liability at academic institutions.
View or download the form
