Related Courses Offered Spring 2006

Please contact TEI if you would like your course added to this list.

UMass Amherst

BIO 105: Biology of Social Issues, Buskin Podos
Designed to provide non-science majors with the basic scientific knowledge that an informed citizen requires to develop thoughtful positions on sometimes controversial questions related to medical ethics, environmental degradation, cloning, biotechnology, STDs, and education.

COMM 497M: Communication and Nature, Donal Carbaugh

ENVIRDES 519: Sustainable Cities, Mark Hamin

GEO-SCI 491Z: Geologic Hazards, Michele Cooke
This course investigates the recognition, characterization and mitigation of geologic hazards with focus on flooding, landslides and earthquakes.

GEO-SCI 250: Natural Disasters, Sean Fitzgerald
Introduction to catastrophic natural hazards and their effects on humans and their environment: volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, floods, droughts, hurricanes, catastrophic landslides. Management and relief of disasters; the damage they cause; prevention and prediction.

GEO-SCI 100: Global Environmental Change, Robert Deconto
The natural relationships between the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and lithosphere; human impact on the natural environment. Global environmental issues: global warming, sea-level rise, and ozone depletion in the stratosphere. Global changes of the past also studied to give perspective to forecasted changes. Includes writing exercises.

GEO-SCI 102: The Human Landscape, Alan Marcus
A wide-ranging introduction to the ways people shape the world they live in.  We will study the themes and concepts of human geography through the current issues and large questions which guide them.  Lectures and reading will focus on the geographic aspects of cultural diversity, population issues, states vs. nations, the global economy, development, urbanization and the human transformation of the earth.  We will cover major subdivisions of human geography including cultural geography, population geography, economic geography, social geography, urban geography and political geography.

GEO-SCI 420: Human Impact on the Natural Environment, Stan Stevens
Human geographical perspectives on the historical human transformation of the earth and current environmental issues. Cultural and historical geography, cultural ecology, political ecology, and environmental history used to explore the diverse, regionally variable, and historically dynamic conditions and processes that have shaped past and present human impacts on the environment. Issues include historical environmental change in New England, the destruction and conservation of tropical rain forests, and Himalayan environmental change and conservation.

GEO-SCI 458: Climatic Change, Mathias Vuille

LEGAL STUDIES 497N: Leah Wing
There will be a component on Katrina during the Spring semester.

POLISCI 253: International Environmental Policies, Peter Haas
Focus on the social, political, and economic factors causing environmental threats and by which efforts have been taken to manage or ameliorate such threats. Introduction to the major actors involved in international environmental politics and the major patterns by which problems are approached internationally.

PLSOILIN 190: Plagues: The Ecology of Disease, William Manning
The natural and social history of major infectious epidemics in humans, plants, and animals, such as Bubonic Plague, ebola, the Irish Famine, and Mad Cow Disease.  The role of emerging and re-emerging diseases in today's world, such as HIV, West Nile Virus, and malaria.  How treatments for today's diseases may breed tomorrow's epidemics, and what the ecology of infectious microbial pathogens can teach us about understanding, identifying and managing diseases. 

RES-ECON 262: Environmental Economics, John Stranlund
Economics of environmental problems, including air, water, and land pollution. Emphasis on analyzing the individual incentive patterns that lead to pollution, and cost-effective regulatory structures that can reduce it. Includes domestic and international issues.

Hampshire College

NS 0113: Water Water Everywhere, Christina Cianfrani
All life relies on water for survival. How have humans changed the landscape to satisfy our need for water and the disposal of wastes? What are the effects of these changes? This class will cover a brief history of the engineering marvels of early water supply, the development of irrigation for agriculture, and how the development of cities and the need to dispose of wastes has changed our approach to water acquisition and management. We will also discuss how the ways in which we have changed the landscape affect our ability (naturally and politically) to respond to natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. Students will read and discuss primary literature, analyze data in teams, and learn basic skills scientists use to analyze water related issues.

NS 0155: Earth Science Frontiers, Steven Roof
This course will explore the leading frontiers of earth science and their implications for the environmental issues confronting society today. Using recent primary scientific literature, students will investigate issues such as global climate change and natural resource depletion and scrutinize current governmental policies related to these issues. All students in the class will be expected to engage in active discussion and to read and interpret primary literature and prepare critical, thoughtful analyses. 300-level students will be expected to help lead the class through a specific issue and provide primary sources of information.

SS 0164: Environmental Policy, Stephanie Levin
What legal and political tools do we have to protect the environment in a globalizing world? This course will explore that question, examining, among other topics, the debate about the proper balance between environmental protection and economic development, the value of wilderness and biodiversity, differing views of western, non-western, and indigenous nations about the environment, and the impact of international free trade regimes, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), on environmental regulation. The course will introduce students to the basic structure of U.S. and international environmental law and to the skills they need to research, understand, and advocate in the area of environmental law and policy. Class members will be encouraged to pursue their own interests for independent reading and research during the semester.

Mount Holyoke College

Geog 204: Human Dimensions of Environmental Change, G Kebbede
Using case studies from Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe, this course examines the interactions between human institutions (such as political and economic structures, science and technology, class and gender systems, and cultures) and the environmental/earth systems that provide their contexts and have been impacted by them. The course will provide a forum to analyze the environmental consequences of a variety of land-use systems, resource use, and development projects and explore possible alternative strategies of human-environment relations that could create a balance between human needs and environmental constraints.

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