Foundations of Environmental Studies I

Catalog description

This course is the first in a two-semester sequence introducing and engaging with the fundamental questions in Environmental Studies, including what defines Environmental Studies as a field, and what shape it might take moving forward. This course is organized around an in-depth examination of specific environmental problems and perspectives, emphasizing the need for an interdisciplinary, integrative, multi-scalar approach to Environmental Studies anchored in robust scientific approaches. In the first semester, we examine critical environmental problems – from climate change and urban sprawl to biodiversity loss – through the lens of the natural sciences. It uses an integrated systems approach to evaluate the fundamental science behind these problems, and the advantages and limitations of the conceptual and quantitative models and empirical approaches that underpin the science. This includes studying human impacts and decision making, and how the natural sciences can begin to inform and shape policy development and analysis. A grounding in these pillars of Environmental Studies will lay the foundation to investigate these same environmental problems from social sciences and humanities perspectives in the second semester.