Curriculum for Applied Sustainability Degree

Students will explore systems in the public, social, and economic realms with application to fields related to social sciences and human services. In this interdisciplinary class, we will examine how systems define, create, and share knowledge. We will explore the commonalities across systems as well as unique viewpoints. We will consider the impacts of implicit and explicit aspects of systems on people and institutions within society through artifacts, practices, policies, and social structures.

There is a difference between what science is, its history and meaning, and what science does through experimental and applied practices. This interdisciplinary course invites students to examine how scientific knowledge is defined, constructed, and communicated. Students will critically analyze different examples of science in society to understand how science shapes and is shaped by culture, power, and people. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to evaluate the ways in which science reflects and transforms the world around us.

This course introduces students to the notion of creative work as knowledge work-unique ways of understanding the world through the arts, design, humanities, and media. Drawing on diverse creative work, including their own, students will explore the potential for varied creative practices and tools to make meaning and how systems-political, economic, cultural-influence what people can make and whether it holds value. Students will also learn to apply critical frameworks in examining the world of creative expression and cultural production.

Students will explore intersecting policies that form and impact the global contexts from which knowledge and culture emerge in fields related to social sciences and human services. They will examine the complex relationships between power structures while applying analytical methods from these fields. Students will analyze the progression of policy development with current practices in fields related to social sciences and human services.

In this course, students will examine how historical forces have influenced the emergence of creative technologies and cultural production. They will learn to apply critical frameworks, including theories, to explore how power structures have intersected with popular appeal to alternately foster and limit creative innovation and expression. Students will also explore the dynamic nature of global culture, investigating how aesthetic ideas and creative practices have developed, spread, and influenced artists and creative production over time.

Students will explore contemporary questions and challenges that practitioners face in fields related to social sciences and human services. Students will examine their positionality in relationship to contemporary and emerging challenges in their respective fields. Students will generate innovative possibilities by connecting frameworks, theories, and interdisciplinary methods.

This course equips students with interdisciplinary tools and methods to analyze and respond to complex, real-world problems. Drawing on diverse frameworks and theories, students will explore how their own identities and experiences shape their understanding of contemporary issues. Emphasis is placed on synthesizing knowledge across fields to develop innovative, contextually relevant solutions. Students will communicate their insights effectively through a range of expressive modes tailored to varied audiences and purposes.

The course provides students with opportunities to develop specialized projects in art, humanities, and media production. Students will apply critical frameworks, including theories, and use interdisciplinary methods to explore how culture is shaped by popular appeal, innovation, and mechanisms of power. Students will work individually and collaboratively to bring creative work-narratives, images, multimedia forms-and rigorous scholarship to complex challenges in varied contexts.

Students will examine how the political vision developed by our forefathers, based on maximum exploitation of seemingly unlimited natural resources, has shaped policy and management and has led to current pressing environmental, economic and social issues. Students will explore the history of US environmental policy and its role in forming domestic and international policies and laws. The evolution of the concept of sustainability and how that is shaping natural resource policy and management both nationally and globally will be considered in-depth.

Students will study the multidisciplinary approaches necessary for successful investigation of environmental, social and economic issues and how they pertain to sustainability. Topics such as food systems, energy, water use and community management of resources are explored and evaluated through social and natural sciences Students will discuss and investigate past and current efforts aimed at addressing complex problems to examine potential solutions. Students will explore systems thinking and develop their own personal credo of sustainable living.

Students examine the processes influencing the distribution and abundance of organisms, the interactions among organisms, and the interactions between organisms and the transformation and flux of energy and matter through the lens of the local bioregion. Students explore the six ecological levels and analyze the effect of human interactions with these systems. Emphasis will be placed on interdependent relationships between and within ecological communities. This course includes two laboratory hours per week.

Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who Owns Paradise? provides a survey of the development and conceptualization of ecotourism, as well as an exploration of the possibilities and pitfalls of 21st century ecotourism. Building on specific global case studies, including the Galapagos Islands, Costa Rica, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Kenya, South Africa and close to home here in the United States and Vermont, our course will take a balanced both/and approach to ecotourism to deepen our understanding of ecotourism as a global phenomenon. We will also consider the future of ecotourism, in light of our 21st century Age of Limits and new emerging technological and political possibilities for human civilization grappling with emerging environmental realities like climate change and peak oil.

Central to effective conservation and management of ecosystems is a deep understanding of the ecological needs and life histories of the wildlife that inhabits these landscapes. This course focuses on the ecology, life history, conservation, management, and study of wildlife, with particular attention to Vermont's vertebrates and their habitats. The course provides a survey in the scientific techniques used by wildlife biologists (e.g. camera traps, tracking, etc.) to detect, gather data, study, and understand wildlife. Students will explore the impact of legal, cultural, and scientific management tools used at the local, state, and federal level to control human-wildlife interactions. Topics discussed include symbiosis, foraging patterns, plant-animal interactions, reproduction, habitat assessment, population abundance and density estimates, disease and parasite management, and endangered species restoration.