Environmental Studies & Policy Minor

Teaches the multidisciplinary approach necessary for successful investigation and resolution of environmental issues. Social and natural sciences are presented as means by which such issues may be quantified and evaluated. Successful and unsuccessful efforts of resolving environmental issues using combinations of means are investigated and discussed. Emphasis is placed on defining, retaining or restoring sustainable global ecosystems.

Introduces the student to the main elements of the earth systems, and analyzes the effects of human interactions with these systems. Emphasis will be given to surface phenomena and to the application of the scientific method to current environmental issues. Course includes two laboratory hours per week.

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 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.

This course will critique environmental policies of the United States of America, the United Nations and one other nation. The goals of these policies will be identified. The success of these policies, in terms of the goals they have set for themselves will be evaluated. Students will develop and present alternatives for improving or replacing existing policies.

Ecological economics is an emerging discipline that seeks to reconcile traditional economics with biophysical limits. We will explore the differing worldviews of neoclassical and ecological economics, and reevaluate the relationship between the human economy and the economy of nature. We will examine mainstream economic issues through an ecological economic perspective and apply economic concepts to environmental issues to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how to propose solutions to solve economic and social problems that promote human and environmental resilience.

Students will explore the several modes of making environmental policy decisions: Technical Analyses, Cost-Effectiveness, Benefit/Cost Analyses, Risk Assessments, Alternatives Assessment, Environmental Impact Analyses, and Ethical Analyses. They will be assigned an environmental policy question and prepare a written report, presented orally, containing their policy recommendations on this question, and defending these recommendations on the basis of these decision making models.