Interdisciplinary introduction to environmental studies. Case-based investigation of environmental issues combining perspectives from the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Topics will vary but may include such subjects as endangered species, air/water pollution, environmental justice/racism, animal rights, global warming, ecotourism, agriculture, nature writing, campus ecology, and others. Both semesters.

An interdisciplinary introduction to the science underlying environmental issues. This course will focus on earth systems science, providing a basic understanding of how the earth's hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere and biosphere work and how they interact. Both semesters.

This course focuses on a range of issues addressing art, architecture and their relationship to a sustainable environment. Through an analysis of critical theory, students will gain an understanding of the language and critical issues of art, architecture and their impact upon the environment. Through a hands-on approach, students will apply these concepts to make ceramic artwork in the SJU Pottery Studio. By using all native materials, designing through a programmatic structure of indigenous systems, in a sustainable framework the student will parallel architectural and design schematics presented in theory and research to an applied reality. Students will critically analyze readings, will discuss examples of art and architecture and will meet with artists in order to expand their understanding of the relationship between art, architecture and the environment. Spring.

Environmental Field Experience offers students the opportunity to apply a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary field methods to a specific topic and geographical area. The course will incorporate on-campus work in the classroom, lab and outdoors with a multi-day field component off campus. The topics will be selected to offer breadth of exposure to methods and access to suitable field sites. Each iteration will provide students with an introduction to and practice with field methods from at least two different disciplines, along with the opportunity to apply them to a discrete topic/project in the off-campus portion of the course. This is a one-credit course that will include a mandatory field experience after graduation. The class is intended for both ENVR majors and minors; students from other majors are welcome as space permits. Topics and locations will vary.

Workshop focusing on current environmental issues in application, intended for students new to the major or minor. Course may be repeated for credit when topics vary with approval of the Department Chair. Both semesters.

Nature of human geography; Demography of world population; Food resources; Urbanisation: models of urban structure, functional areas in cities, cities in developing countries; Politico-geographical organisation: nations and states in conflict, regions in the news; Environmental systems on a global scale: fluvial, arid, karst, coastal and glacial environments; Ecosystems and humans; Utilisation of environmental resources: global occurrence, use and depletion of non-renewable energy, water and soil resources; Practical mapping and graphics.

Supervised reading or research at the lower-division level. Permission of program director required. Consult department for applicability towards major requirements. Not available to first-year students.

An interdisciplinary scientific exploration of environmental issues through case studies. Specific case studies will be chosen by the instructor, but will typically center around the broad topics of population, climate change, food and agriculture, biodiversity, pollution and energy. Both semesters.

This course explores the history of the 20th century world through an environmental lens, emphasizing relationships between humans and the natural world, the impacts of social/political/economic systems on nature, and the evolving use of natural resources in human societies. Movements of people, raw materials, capital, manufactured goods, and living material between ecosystems receive particular attention. The impacts of human action on the natural world, including resource extraction, large-scale construction, agriculture, transportation of species between ecosystems, warfare, migration, and the generation of pollutants will be followed through the century on scales ranging from regional to global. Students will develop an understanding of how humans have shaped the environments they inhabit both directly and indirectly, how nature influences culture over time, and how the environmental crises of the 21st century are rooted in historical events, decisions, and actions. The skills of historical analysis and argumentation will be practiced throughout the course as well.

This course serves as an introduction to the analytical tools and metrics of environmental studies, providing students with quantitative and qualitative methodological skills germane to environmental problem solving that can be applied in upper division courses and in their own research projects. Emphases will include basic quantitative literacy, units of measurement commonly used in environmental fields, estimation, basic applied statistical analysis, cost-benefit and other economic metrics, textual analysis of survey and interview data, and data visualization through construction of graphics and maps. Students will also be guided through the process of collecting both primary and secondary data. Students will learn to apply these methods and to critique the use of similar methods by the media, in marketing campaigns and by other researchers.

This course will introduce students to the Nordic Model of social democracy as a framework for addressing sustainability. While we will address all three components of the sustainability (social, economic, and environmental), approximately 2/3 of the course materials will focus on environmental sustainability. The course takes place largely I southern Sweden, and topics include energy (renewable energy, small-scale energy networks, and waste-to-energy plants), sustainable transpiration networks, shared/cooperatives, planned neighborhoods, compulsory recycling, gender equity initiatives, work-life balance regulation, and outdoor preschools. In addition to reading about these topics, students will experience them first hand on site visits. Students will also attend thesis presentations by students graduation with a Master’s in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science and Lund University.

This course explores the relationship between environment, ideas of justice, and social inequity. We will examine how racial, economic, and cultural status can affect people’s access to a clean, safe environment and productive natural resources. We will consider examples of how people’s access to a safe, clean environment and vital natural resources are threatened or violated locally, nationally, and globally. Specific issues examined may include energy issues such as coal mining and fracking, siting of hazardous waste facilities, exposure to toxins, and inequalities in food systems, among others. This course will also look at the environmental justice movement as it emerged in the late 20th century, both within the United States as well as globally. Although the primary perspective is sociological, the course is taught from an interdisciplinary approach that includes history, ethics and natural science. Using a mixture of in-depth case studies and broader theory, the course will specifically look at the connection between institutional racism and environmental problems in the U.S., the perpetuation of class inequalities, the lack of diversity in the mainstream environmental movement, and the role of women in the environmental justice movement. The role of public policy (such as zoning and the history of urban segregation) will be discussed, as well as some of the mechanisms being used to secure environmental rights and promote environmental justice.

This course explores literary writing from around the globe about climate change, with particular attention to questions of post-coloniality and environmental justice. Texts will include readings from every continent, including Antarctica, as well as genres ranging from poetry to literary theory to "cli-fi" (climate science-fiction). Through reading, thinking, discussing, and writing critically about a wide range of genres and cultural expressions, students will gain an appreciation for the depth of the world's literary approaches to the climate crisis. Students will learn to actively engage such writing from a variety of approaches including historical analysis, ecocriticism, and ethical reasoning.

This course will examine the evolution of our modern understanding of the natural world. How do we imagine nature, and do other cultures (past and present) imagine it differently? Where exactly did our current understanding of the natural world come from, and where does it seem to be heading in the future? In asking these questions, we will also explore how different visions of nature (nature as God's creation, nature as a mechanical structure, nature as a complex ecosystem, human nature etc.) have shaped our approach to our understanding of the lives we live. Students will examine a mix of history, biology, political philosophy, literature, film and cultural theory texts as part of a course of study designed to investigate where, why and how writing and nature intersect in our world today.Course Objectives: 1. To explore the social and historical importance of influential visions of nature from the ancient world up to more recent modern and/or postmodern periods, 2. To investigate the relationship between ¿nature,¿ economics and literature, 3. To examine how certain visions of nature have been used to justify social inequalities, 4. To read debates about the natural world from politically informed perspectives, and 5. To study how different visions of nature shape and reshape our understanding of the natural and social worlds in which we all live.

Case-study based and issue-oriented approach to understanding relationships between societies and their environments from a geographical perspective. Centered on exploring how humans around the world have modified their environments, and how societies respond to environmental change.  Examining these processes includes exploring the current and historical roles played by social and cultural institutions, by political and economic systems, and by forces such as development and globalization.

This course examines the relationships between human cultures and the environments they inhabit. We will engage with the ways in which environments are collusions of human knowledge, perspective, histories, and economic and other cultural systems. Many of the course texts grapple with environmental management systems throughout the world, and ways that people plan for, participate in, subvert, and are affected by environment management schemes. Furthermore, this course also emphasizes the ways in which people shape knowledge about the environment and environmental management throughout historical vantages as well as Western science, particularly of conservation biology and ecology.

This course surveys the relationships between Western religions and the natural world. The course traces the historical development of how nature has been perceived, beginning with Jewish and Christian origins, proceeding through the Middle ages and into modernity, giving special attention to the interactions between Christianity and other faiths (e.g., pre-Christian European traditions and Native American spiritualities). The primary focus of the course concerns contemporary issues within the United States, including religious environmentalism within church bodies and the non-profit sector, forms of spirituality within environmentalism, eco-feminism, the environmental justice movement, nature religions, and contested depictions of the natural world within Christianity.

The course focuses on the management and conservation of natural resources in the United States, including the national parks, national forests, oil/gas/mineral resources, surface and ground water, fisheries, wildlife, grazing/rangeland, and other publicly-managed resources. It explores the scientific, economic, cultural, legal, administrative, and political dimensions of natural resource management challenges faced by resource managers at a variety of levels from local lake associations to state departments of natural resources to federal agencies like the US Forest Service, National Park Service, and Bureau of Land Management. Through an interdisciplinary approach we will examine specific issues faced by agencies tasked with managing parks, wildlife, fisheries, hunting, mining, grazing, logging, recreation, and other resource uses. Specific attention will be paid to the various roles of public-sector employees and careers related to natural resource management within public agencies, as well as to the legal and political contexts for decision-making and conflict resolution. The course is open to all majors and anyone with an interest in natural resource management, ecology, environmental conflicts, environmental law and policy, public-sector management, government, politics, outdoor recreation, and related topics.

This course will offer the experience of exploring the interplay between the world of woods (nature) and the world of words (literature). Students will read, analyze and discuss a wide range of nature writing, but the main focus of the class will be on the creation of their own body of nature-based, written work, primarily in the form of creative nonfiction. Emphasis will be placed on the development of individual voices and styles.

This course will explore the health of the environment and how it relates to public policy by examining the issues and problems associated with environmental pollution and how pollutants impact our ecosystem. Students will develop an understanding of the physical processes involved in polluted environments as well as the socioeconomic consequences. Topics may include energy and resources; water treatment; geoengineering; climate change; remediation strategies; environmental public policy; in addition to pollution in the air, water, and soil including heavy metals, toxic organic compounds, ozone, greenhouse gases and pesticides.

A sustainable world requires continual examination and debate related to the ways we plan, design and manage human settlements. Urban planners and policy makers address both the built and natural environment and the relationships between town and country. Sustainable development has ecological, economic and social aspects. The organization and design of space is a prime source of resource and energy use, as well as being a key to well -functioning and healthy communities. The course includes discussion and debate on themes including land use, economic development, ecological footprint, social neighborhood planning, citizen participation, work and mobility, and urban ecology.

Managing agricultural landscapes to provide the world with sustainable food, fiber, and fuel while conserving the environment and addressing climate change is a grand challenge of 21st century agriculture. This course examines agroecosystems as complex adaptive systems characterized by interactions and feedbacks among organisms, the atmosphere, climate, and the cycling of elements at local to global scales. Key elemental cycles of carbon and nitrogen and how human activities are affecting these cycles, and creating environmental challenges will be emphasized. Soil and crop management practices and resulting interactions between soil, water, organisms, and organic and chemical inputs form the basis for discussions on diverse cropping systems, soil health, water quality and quantity, bioenergy, greenhouse gases, and sustainability.

This course explores the foundational theory, pedagogies, and history of Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) for children and adults. Utilizing a variety of adventure-based activities (e.g. rock climbing, backpacking, canoeing), students will apply OAE concepts to curriculum design, instruction, and leadership development. Classroom instruction in theory will be complimented by practica that will develop applied skills in adventure activities along with the associated facilitation techniques, risk assessments, and group management skills necessary to conduct effective OAE lessons. This course will be a combination of classroom lecture and discussion along with adventure-based experiential learning occurring mostly outdoors. All students interested in outdoor recreation, environmental education, work with youth and/or adult programs and camps, natural resource management, team building, and education pedagogies are encouraged to enroll regardless of major or minor. Notes: An optional weekend workshop leading to Wilderness First Aid and CPR certification, which is often needed for employment in the field, will be offered in spring.

This course involves exploration of climate policy and climate justice action at the national, regional, and local level. Students will learn about climate change and its effects, policies, and technologies to address climate change, and debates over taking action, focused on the national and local level. Students will gain hands-on organizing skills through planning an event around climate justice, interview climate justice stake holders in the MN region, and engage in solidarity work with MN-based climate justice organizations, including attendance at local events. Offered annually.

This course involves preparation for, research in support of, and attendance at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) annual Conference of Parties (COP). Meeting once per week in the fall semester, students will learn about climate change and its effects, policies and technologies to address climate change, and debates over taking action, all at the global level. Students will also learn about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UNFCCC, in preparation for attending the conference. Each student will focus on one aspect of climate change, writing a research paper that includes both preliminary research before the conference then primary research at the conference itself, attending sessions devoted to that issue and interviewing stakeholders. Participants are required to attend the COP during the semester they take this course. Enrollment is by permission of instructor only. Applications for this course are accepted each spring semester. Students accepted into the course will be enrolled in the course by the instructor. This course can be combined with ENVR 303: Climate Action Workshop to create a four-credit course. Offered annually.

This course involves intensive study and role play of global solutions to climate change, centered around the United Nations (UN) process. Students will learn about policies and technologies to address climate change and debates over taking action, all at the global level. Students will also learn about the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in preparation for a multi-week role play of the UN climate negotiations in which each student plays a country or organization. Each student will complete research papers and speeches to support their role in the role play, becoming experts on particular countries or organizations and how they approach implementation of the Paris Agreement. Students will virtually interview stakeholders to inform the research for their role play and papers. This course can be combined with ENVR 305 (which travels to the annual Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC) to create a 4-credit course. Offered annually.

This course is an upper level, reading intensive course focusing on global environmental issues from the perspective of geography. Using water as a topical focus, the course will consider human modifications of and responses to the environment; the sometimes unintended consequences of such actions; and water as a key resource and potential source of conflict in the 21st century. As an environmental studies course, the subject matter is interdisciplinary and will include physical geography. Annually.

This is an introductory course in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS is designed to collect, store, and use spatial and geographical information, such as land use, property ownership, roads, rivers, lakes, forest cover type, elevation, versus tract boundaries and data, and political boundaries. In this course, students will learn to use ESRI's ArcGIS software within a larger context that also includes a history of cartography, the uses and abuses of maps, elements of map design, mental maps, participatory GIS, and a range of ethical issues that must be considered in learning how to use this powerful technology responsibly. Annually.

This course explores the long history of American writing about nature and the environment, with particular attention to questions of the human place in nature. Some of this literate is about exploration—what is out there? Some of this is about the utility of nature—what can we do with vast forests, grasslands, or rivers? But the most interesting examples are often about what we can learn from nature and what obligations we may have to non-human life—what is our place in nature? The styles and traditions of American nature/ environmental writing have changed dramatically over time and today are quite diverse, incorporating at times elements of philosophy, theology, ethics, science, economics, politics, and art. Through reading, thinking, and discussing, and writing critically about a wide range of examples from genre students will gain an appreciation for the depth of the American literary approach to nature, become familiar with many of the writers and texts that could be said to form a “canon” in the field. And will learn to actively engage such writing form a variety of approaches including historical analysis, ecocriticism, and ethical reasoning.

In depth, interdisciplinary study of a single topic in environmental studies. By design the course will provide both depth of exposure in a topic and methodological instruction and application of research skills in the field, as preparation for the research requirements of other upper division ENVR courses and for the application in post-collegiate career settings. Topics will vary each semester, but skills covered will include group discussion, formal oral presentation, poster design and presentation, secondary literature analysis, research design, collaborative project design and implementation, and written presentation of research results. This course is intended for junior/senior Environmental Studies majors and must be taken before enrolling in the ENVR 395: Research Seminar capstone. Both semesters.

This course explores the links between gender, women, and environments, with an emphasis on the interconnections between environments and the workings of power that shape gender-based inequality, resistance, and strategies for social change. Through reading, discussion, documentary films, and research projects, we will explore how gender inequalities and norms of femininity and masculinity shape and are shaped by environments. The course will focus on local (U.S.) and global climate change; women’s leadership in the environmental movement and community resilience; development; gendered perceptions of environmental risk; queer perspectives on environmental issues; how gendered divisions of labor (particularly care of children and elderly) affect environmental experiences; sustainable agriculture and redistribution of global resources; the effects of globalization and militarism on women and the environment; social constructions of gender and science; and the relationship between gender and environmental policy-making, inequalities, and health.

This is a course about the politics and policies surrounding environmental issues at all levels of government. Many issues are both local and global. Transportation, electricity, and food are locally experienced but have global as well as local environmental ramifications. Environmental politics and policy are necessarily multi-disciplinary topics so we will draw upon a range of disciplines including economics, history, ecology, and ethics in addition to political science, public policy, and public administration. In covering environmental politics, we focus mostly on the major, albeit shifting, themes of "environmentalism" from white-collar lobbying, legislating and litigating to the direct action protests and the politics of corporate sustainability. The policy focus emphasizes content related to major federal laws governing public lands and other environmental issues, and the federal agencies that oversee environmental policy. The second half of the course concentrates on specific local, national and international issues such as the management of national forests, food politics, and local land use planning. We will study each issue by discussing the players and major debates circulating around the respective ecological issues.

Heated ideological debates and images of imminent environmental catastrophe generated by the issue of climate change often obscure the scientific foundation upon which it rests. In this course we will explore: (i) Earth’s climatic history and how we know about this history, (ii) the drivers of climate change past and present, and (iii) the impact of climate changes and stability on the biosphere and human societies on the past. By understanding how climate naturally changed in the past we will be able to better understand current human-driven change. The impacts of, and potential solutions to the current climate crisis will be covered within this historical context.

Environmental history is the study of the relationship between humans and nature over time. This course examines the changing American understanding of nature in the 19th and 20th centuries with particular attention to the development of public policies toward natural resources and wildlife, the emergence of a new set of values recognizing non-utilitarian values in nature, and to the evolution of the conservation and environmental movements. Intellectual, political, economic, scientific, and social evidence will all be examined in the process of placing nature back into the human history of North America. This course is suitable for students of any major, including those who have not taken a previous history course.

In “Contemporary Urban Spaces” we see that the city, basin and peripheries of Athens have been in constant transformation since its modern foundation. The Athenian landscape, environment, society and urban fabric comprise a frantic, diverse and complex laboratory of change – designed, informal, democratic, entropic, catastrophic, top-down and bottom-up. Here the immense pressures, challenges and opportunities for the contemporary Mediterranean Metropolis and other global cities may be elucidated and projected upon in medias res. Against the ancient walks capes, vibrant commons, human scale, deep palimpsest, horizontal density, living typologies, enclave nature, waste landscapes, water networks, migration patterns, crisis conditions, civitas and public space of the contemporary city. This analysis and representation seminar will examine the role and potential of Urban Planning and Design and the challenges of endemic and upcoming (climate) Change in ten specific zones, areas or urban enclaves of Athens – all exemplary locations of resistance, flux or genesis of urban transformation. How do contemporary theories of urbanism measure up against these places? What can design do to affect a city’s future? What new spaces, architectures, structures and environments emerge at the edge of the crisis and the wake of even greater challenges? The “Contemporary Urban Spaces” course will be structured in lectures, student presentations and a number of walks. Students will document their research in papers, maps & media. The seminar may also be complemented by an independent design studio component (U372).

Introductory overview and comprehension of GIS in the context of geo-information science; The nature of geographical data, data models, coordinate systems and map projections; GIS processes: data capturing, ordering and storage, manipulation and analysis; Map design and cartographic visualisation with a GIS; GIS applications

Supervised reading or research at the upper-division level. Permission of program director required. Consult department for applicability towards major requirements. Not available to first-year students.

This course explores the relationship between energy and society. Through diverse materials and field trips, we will learn about the energy infrastructures that power our society, the social, political, and cultural factors that shape energy production and consumption, and the relationship between energy, environment, and climate. Throughout, we will examine how all of these factors inform inequalities in who has access to energy and who is impacted by energy extraction, processing, transportation, and consumption. Students will leave the course prepared to assess the social and environmental impacts and benefits of different types of energy, and to contribute to discussions about building sustainable and just energy futures.

Capstone seminar for majors/minors; intensive research project and formal presentation in collaborative setting. Both semesters.

Supervised career exploration which promotes the integration of theory with practice. An opportunity to apply skills under direct supervision in an approved setting. Prerequisites: approval of the department chair and a faculty moderator; completion of the pre-internship seminar.