Contemporary Issues in Environmental Policy: Capstone

Catalog description

The purpose of this course is to give students the opportunity to develop a capstone research project, based on an environmental issue of their choice that will result in a final product that has the potential to: • Be published in an environmental journal • Be used as education policy analysis by environmental organization and other advocacy organizations or • Be used by legislative and/or administrative staff for developing new regulations. The capstone projects will focus on developing academic research that has immediate practical value in the political world. This course will utilize E-Portfolio in order or link the students in real-time to each other’s projects and to enable their work to be shared with the boarder environmental community when it is completed. The research will follow the format of a policy analysis in which students will identify the principle political stakeholders, their positions and arguments; the important counter-arguments; the scientific basis for the polices; the health implications; the long and short-term environmental and eco-system implications of the issues, economic costs and benefits; and proposed polices to address the issue. The major focus of the project will be a thorough analysis of each of the proposed policy alternatives to identify their strengths and weaknesses in terms of environmental benefits and costs.