Offered to graduate and undergraduate students.
The purpose of this course is to teach students about the environmental problems that result from modern, intensive agriculture and to guide them through the complexities of current agri-environmental governance. The course will provide students with a strong background on agriculture’s global environmental footprint, differences in farming systems (such as shifting cultivation, smallholders, and intensive monoculture production), the advantages and disadvantages of technological innovations, the history of the Farm Bill and its current conservation programs, and theories pertaining the solving environmental problems. Students will learn about different voluntary, regulatory, and collaborative governance approaches and tools available to policymakers and their strengths and weaknesses to solving environmental problems. The course will allow students to analyze and develop policy proposals on three pressing environmental challenges: water quality degradation, biodiversity declines from habitat loss, and climate change impacts from deforestation.
Offered to graduate students.
Environmental Management enables students to become effective managers in the public sector by acquiring knowledge, skills, and abilities to address complex trends, co-produce solutions with stakeholders, and effectively implement management priorities. Specific topics covered in the course include program analysis, legal authorities and trends relevant to environmental managers; organizational structure and design; strategic planning and goal setting; program evaluation; employee motivation and work-related attitudes and organizational change and innovation. This course incorporates communication and implementation skills into an integrated understanding of environmental science, law, resource management, and environmental policy.
Offered to undergraduate students.
Environment and People is an introductory course that explores how people interact with their environment and the ways each influence one another in expected and unexpected ways. A core concern in this class is to sift through and understand some of the big arguments and tensions around how we manage the environment, especially to reduce our negative impacts. We will explore three big topics in this course that repeatedly come up in arguments around protecting the environment (and ultimately about protecting people): overpopulation, ecosystem restoration, and climate change. While these topics provide a way to explore the ideas of conservation, environmentalism, and natural resource use, the course is intended to provide a broad overview and expose us to a range of topics and considerations for critical reflection. As an introductory course, no particular level of familiarity is expected at the outset. Everyone will have plenty of opportunity to probe deeper and strengthen their understanding of how we interact with our environment regardless of the knowledge they bring to the class at the beginning.
Offered to undergraduate students enrolled in the Honors Program.
Pre-requisite: V491 Honors Research in Public and Environmental Affairs
Course Description: This course teaches students to communicate research results to experts in their field of study and to other audiences of scientists, policymakers, and the public. Students will take the research findings from the pre-requisite course Honors Research, generated under the guidance of a thesis advisor(s), and will communicate those findings to different audiences using appropriate formats and styles: a research manuscript (6,000-10,000 words), a 12-minute research presentation, and an 800-word blog post.