Interdisciplinary Environmental Analysis
This minor was developed to prepare students to tackle real-world environmental challenges by providing more robust opportunities for interdisciplinary knowledge and skill development. The minor is structured to provide students with opportunities to strengthen their critical analysis and problem-solving skills through participation in team-based, experiential, often community-engaged learning around “wicked” real-world problems. Most courses do not have pre-requisites*
sample courses:
Why, when all evidence points to the growing threats of climate change, is it so difficult to create movement toward addressing this issue? Why, when we have so much evidence that vaccines reduce illness and death and are extremely safe, do individuals still choose not to vaccinate their children? What if I told you that the scientific evidence does not matter? Over the last few decades, neither better education, nor guilt, nor fear has worked to produce change on important environmental and public health issues. In this course, we will explore the different factors that contribute to the reasons why scientific evidence does not matter for the individual choices we make or policies we support. We will especially consider how values, beliefs, emotions, and identity shape how we process information and make decisions. We will examine how we might talk to one another in a way that might shift thinking or behavior as well as how we can create evidence-based policy. We will explore themes of worldview, cognitive linguistics and framing, cognitive dissonance, risk perception, empathy, habit changes, bungles in messaging, and difficult dialoguing through the examples of climate change and vaccination. Course activities will consist of regular reading, some online research, reflective journaling at home, and engaging in conversation during class. This course is designed to target upper-level students in environmental majors and pre-health studies.
In this environmental humanities course we will compare and integrate diverse texts and narratives through which Americans have developed a complex relationship to nuclear technology. Nuclear technology has long been developed, used and debated. Capable of both healing and harm, it challenges our notions of risk verses benefit at every level. It is also poised to potentially play a significant environmental role in climate mitigation by delivering large amounts of nearly carbon-free energy.Using texts such as literary non-fiction, history, environmental anthropology, natural history and public health, we will explore aspects of the Manhattan Project, the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor accident, the presence of fear in the public perception of nuclear technology, and debates regarding the current and future use of nuclear energy. Two or three Saturday field site visits will be required, one to Weldon Springs Interpretive Center
