“Our job is not to make up anybody’s mind but to make the agony of 
decision-making so intense that you can only escape by thinking.” Fred W. Friendly, former CBS president and Columbia professor 

An Interdisciplinary Course for High School Students

Columbia River Studies Class at Catherine Creek, near Bingen, Washington

The Columbia River Studies class at Stevenson High School in Stevenson, Washington, is an interdisciplinary course that uses science, history, mathematics, geography, technology, art, music, and literature to study a place.

Through studies in class and in the field, students learn about the Columbia River and  practice ways to gather and analyze information about specific places on the river. Individual projects take students into the field to study a place they care about and give them opportunities to study agencies, laws, and developments that have an effect on the landscape and on the natural and human communities that live on the river.

Credits: The development of Columbia River Studies was supported by a grant from the Columbia River Basin Project, a project of the Center for Columbia River History
in Vancouver, Washington. Additional support for the study of salmon habitat and technology came from SLEUTHS, a technology grant from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of Washington.