On Wednesday nights, Prof. Jefferson Cowie walks upstairs from his apartment to his 7:30 class. He abandons the typical professorial necktie, and rather than walking in with a briefcase, he brings only his dog Higgins.

About a dozen students, some sporting pajama bottoms, greet him as he enters, all of them vying for his attention as they propose potential community service projects, ask questions about course credit or complain about the course’s inaccessibility on Blackboard — all the while avoiding Higgins as he runs around in search of a free hand to pet him.

“I will lay my body in front of the president’s office if I have to,” Cowie said in response to his attempts to offer credit for the course, which, at the time, was one of his top priorities.

This is only one of many problems that have arisen, however, as Cowie attempts to get his two-credit pilot course, titled “Sustainable Ithaca,” up and running. The class meets once a week in William Keeton House and is part of the house initiative to meld residential and intellectual life on West Campus.

The course focuses on the environmental aspect of sustainability and the economic and social issues that relate, in order to help students learn what they can do to ensure the material resources they enjoy today will be around for future generations.

“This isn’t a ‘paint-the-playground’ type of course,” Cowie said.

His objective is to have students use their existing knowledge from their various majors and integrate it into the promotion of sustainability at Keeton House, on campus and in the community.

Cowie is an associate professor in ILR, as well as the house professor and dean of William Keeton House. As dean, one of his jobs is to propose and initiate various social activities for the Keeton residents. These can range from guest speaker presentations, to movie nights, to ice cream socials.

Cowie, however, wanted something that would bring the students together under a common goal while, at the same time, become a permanent part of the Keeton House legacy.

“For too long it’s been that 4:30 p.m. rolls around and the learning stops and the beers open,” Cowie said.

In the spring of 2009, Cowie began to take action on this idea with the help of Assistant Dean Ethan Stephenson and Graduate Resident Fellow Jill Cohen. Together, they came up with a basic idea for a service-learning sustainability course to be offered only to Keeton House residents taught by the three of them.

Stephenson, a PhD candidate whose research focuses on college student development, said that the benefit of having multiple people teach the course is that each can contribute their area of expertise to some aspect of sustainability.

“My focus is on the service learning aspect, and then you have [Cohen] who is our environmental scientist, and Jeff is the labor historian, who is also well connected in the community,” Stephenson said.

In coming up with a loose curriculum for the course, the three decided it would be beneficial to have outside sources come in to help teach as well.

“A lot of it was deciding who we could farm stuff out to because we weren’t experts,” Cohen said, a PhD student in natural resources, explaining that the unofficial nature of the course meant that much of the teaching would be done through guest speakers from the academic and Ithaca communities.

The biggest concern for the course, however, was how they would give credit to the students. For many weeks, there was debate over what department the course should fall into, as its subject matter spans over a variety of schools, departments and majors at Cornell.

“Cornell is based on multiple colleges that, in their best sense, can provide a university where you can study anything. In the worst sense, each department is like they’re own little silo,” Cowie said, commenting on the lack of interaction between disciplines at Cornell and the effect that has had on finding a home for his course.

Cowie said that the course is considered an ILR independent study class and he hopes that, in the future, the course might be worth three or four credits rather than two.

Despite all their efforts, Cowie, Cohen and Stephenson are not receiving any type of monetary or teaching credit compensation for their involvement in this course.

In fact, Cowie has had to give up some of his privileges as dean as a result of this endeavor. As house dean, he is allowed to teach one less course a semester, but by volunteering to teach this new course, he is back to the same workload as regular professors.

“[Cowie] has a genuine interest in students and sincere faith in their abilities, which is inspiring,” Cohen said. She has worked with Cowie in informal settings within Keeton House in the past, but is experiencing him as a professor for the first time.

His students seem to agree. Stephanie Tsang ’12, describes Cowie as more like a friend than a professor.

“The fact that none of them get teaching credit makes you respect them even more because you know they’re not just doing it for the money or because they have to. They’re genuinely interested in the subject and helping us to learn,” Tsang said.

All three members of the teaching team say that they hope to offer courses like these, whether focused on sustainability or another theme, regularly in the future. Stephenson said it is even possible that the other houses on West Campus will adopt similar programs should the course be deemed a success by the end of the semester.

“[The administration] basically told me, ‘Here, Jeff, take the keys. Let’s see what you can do,’” Cowie said, “and it’s already exceeded my expectations.”