Human activities are causing rapid changes in many aspects of the earth’s environment. The goal of the Global Environmental Change cluster program is to integrate scientific perspectives on historical and current climate dynamics with societal and economic assessments of current, past, and future environmental changes. The courses in the cluster will cover the causes, consequences, and in some cases mitigation of environmental and climate changes from a variety of perspectives, using examples from terrestrial, marine and atmospheric environments. The cluster is centered around a core course that will present a natural sciences/social sciences perspective on global warming and other large-scale trends (present, past, and future) that impact our environment. We strongly urge all cluster participants to take this course (MASC 310) prior to or concurrently with other courses in the cluster. This course, as well as the other science-based courses listed below, is aimed at and accessible to third- and fourth-year undergraduates; no special expertise in the natural sciences is required.
MASC 310, Our Changing Planet: Science, Social Impacts, Solutions (core course) [NS]
ANTH 460, Historical Ecology [SS]
ANTH 312, From the Equator to the Poles: Case Studies in Global Environmental Change [NS]
GEOG 414, Climate Change [SS]
MASC 432, Major World Rivers and Global Change: From Mountains to the Sea [NS]
MASC 314, Earth Systems in a Changing World [NS]
PHIL 368, Environmental Ethics [HM]
PLCY 480, Environmental Decision Making [SS]
The four Divisions of the College of Arts and Sciences, with their abbreviations:
[HM]: Humanities
[FA]: Fine Arts
[SS]: Social and Behavioral Sciences
[NS]: Natural Sciences and Mathematics