Environment & Sustainability (ENSP)

An exploration of significant questions and integrative concepts in Environmental Science, their grounding in the process of scientific discovery and application, and their broader relevance to society. Designed for first-year students. Although topics vary, the courses also seek to improve students’ communication skills beyond the written word.

This team-taught interdisciplinary course brings together perspectives and approaches to environmental problems from natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Examines key environmental concepts by exploring case studies such as pollution and contamination disputes, ecosystem management in the Chesapeake Bay, and biodiversity.

An exploration of a specific topic in Environmental Studies. A grade of C- or better fulfills the COLL 150 requirement. Although topics vary, the courses emphasize academic writing skills, reading and analysis of texts, and discussion.

This course provides an introduction to environmental policymaking and administration in the United States. First, we will discuss what are distinct characteristics and challenges of environmental issues (i.e. collective action problems) and examine the existing laws that regulate the environment in the United States. Then we will examine the major players involved in the environmental policy formulation and implementation – the presidency, the congress, the bureaucracy and the courts, and the public. While most of the course is focused on federal-level policymaking, we will also discuss how local and international levels affect national-level environmental policies.

This course introduces students to the state of scientific knowledge about climate and climate change, including natural cycles and human-induced changes. It explores potential impacts of climate change, national policies, the Kyoto Protocol, and other global efforts to address the problem.

This workshop course will have students and faculty working as a team on community-based research, addressing important local and regional environmental issues in consultation with community organizations and local government agencies. Topics vary by semester and results are presented publicly.

The ethical implications of the sustainability revolution are examined with emphasis on its progress beyond environmentalism and its applicability to such issues as global warming, biodiversity, food production and world hunger, population growth, and HIV-AIDS.

The ethical implications of globalization and the sustainability revolution are examined. Emphasized are the ethical controversies surrounding the social responsibility of trans-national corporations, consumerism, growing world thirst, and the challenges of protecting the environment, jobs and workers rights.

Ecotherapy is a set of practices aimed at intentionally developing a deep relationship with the natural world to facilitate personal, communal, and environmental health, healing, and flourishing. In this course, you will develop an intellectual understanding of ecotherapy through review and discussion of scientific research in this burgeoning field. This understanding will be solidified through experiential learning, embodied experiences, and reflection. You will engage in weekly ecotherapy exercises outdoors. Final projects will integrate scholarly research with personal experience to design transformative ecotherapy programming for a vulnerable population. Course topics include: your brain on nature, children and nature, mindfulness-based ecotherapy, eco-art therapy, animal-assisted therapy, nature prescriptions, and more.

Independent environmental research for First-year and Sophomore students that is closely mentored by a faculty member. All projects must include an analysis, write-up, and interpretation of the student’s work.

This course is an in-depth look at an important issue of environmental science and policy. The topics to be considered will be announced prior to the beginning of the semester. The course is primarily designed for sophomores and juniors who have taken Introduction to Environmental Science and Policy. Some topics will include a required weekly laboratory session. In past year it has been common for us to count GEOL 305 Environmental Geology as an ENSP 249 class.

Key environmental topics will be addressed by top national and international environmental experts in three lectures and informal discussion sessions with students. Small groups of students will meet with faculty to discuss readings and the lectures, and a written assignment will integrate the topic.

The course will explore the following philosophical/ethical topics: 1) the wilderness idea, 2) the interdependency of human society and nature, 3) the ethical defense of Leopold’s “Land Ethic” , 4) “animal liberation”, 5) the limits of human moral agency with attention to our species’ evolutionary history, 6) the ethics of producing, using, banning, selling and disposing of potentially hazardous chemical substances, 7) the ethics of food production and vegetarianism/veganism, and 8) the working out of an “ocean ethic”.

This course reviews core issues in environmental ethics and then takes an in-depth look at one area environmental ethics, such as the ethics of conserving biodiversity, Earth Rights, or key environmental cases which raise ethical concerns.

This is a topics course in environmental arts, literature, & film, where the topic of focus changes from semester to semester. ENSP 310 is an in-depth study of the complex relationship between humans and the environment and thus counts towards the environmental arts, literature, and film requirement. Each course is also listed under its home department CRN. Registering under either CRN will satisfy the requirement. ENSP 310 is primarily designed for students who have taken ENSP 101 and can be repeated for credit when the topic changes.

This is a topics course in environmental history, where the topic of focus changes from semester to semester.  ENSP 311 counts towards the environmental humanities requirement in the Environmental Science and Environmental Policy tracks and the environmental history requirement in the Environmental Humanities track.  Each course is also listed under its home department CRN.  Registering under either CRN will satisfy the requirement.  ENSP 311 is primarily designed for students who have taken ENSP 101 and can be repeated for credit when the topic changes.

This is a topics course in the environmental social sciences where the topic of focus changes from semester to semester. These courses provide an in-depth study of the complex relationship between human society and the environment and thus count towards the environmental social sciences requirement. Each course is also listed under its home department CRN. Registering under either CRN will satisfy the requirement. ENSP 320 is primarily designed for students who have taken ENSP 101 and can be repeated for credit when the topic changes.

Taking a hemispheric perspective of the Americas, this course explores case studies, ethnographies and artwork where asymmetries of power deny the rights of certain groups of people to live in a clean environment free from hazardous contamination. In addition, this course will reconnect us with forms of popular, indigenous and spiritual knowledge systematically excluded from modern instrumental rationality, and will also challenge us to deconstruct apocalyptic perspectives of the current environmental crisis.

Karl Marx observes that, “… in the end, Capitalism will destroy both Labor and Nature.” Affirmed by our experience, we may still wonder if it is true – that our presumptive means of economic life, the source of our wealth and values, our prosperity, and the one historic economic system that has raised standards of living globally, is in the end the engine that is eroding our freedom, impoverishing millions and destroying our planet, threatening our very existence. We are inclined to view the triad of capitalism, poverty and nature as “natural law” or “facts of nature” that we cannot transcend. We fail to recognize that together they constitute a world imbricated by and subject to human action where we hold the power of change. First comes understanding. In this course we examine the systemic interrelationships of Capitalism, Poverty and Environment that produce emergent properties (templates) predicating the negative outcomes we observe as the selective degradation of peoples. From this foundation we can address questions of policy and law that amplify first order conditions and lead to systemic environmental injustice in the areas of education, health care, housing, and exposure to catastrophic environmental events. Student case studies will explore these areas.

This course provides students a hands-on, in-depth look at an issue of environmental science and policy. The topics to be considered will be announced prior to the beginning of the semester. The course is primarily designed for senior majors or minors.

A topics course for seniors based on an extended review of an environmental issue by each student. In consultation with the professor, students will select a topic in advance of registration for the course, and will research the topic through all appropriate sources (literature, Internet, individuals, etc). An oral presentation and a paper are required.

This course is designed to permit the environmental science/studies concentrator to engage in independent research in their Junior or Senior years. Working closely with a faculty member as an advisor, each student will be expected to conduct original research and prepare a substantial research paper.

Environmental Science and Policy Honors students must meet the College’s provisions on admissions to the program, see catalog section titled Honors and Special Programs. These students enroll for both semesters of their senior year, defending an Honors Proposal at the end of the first semester, and completing an Honors research project or essay and defending it in an oral exam by April 15th.

Environmental Science and Policy Honors students must meet the College’s provisions on admissions to the program, see catalog section titled Honors and Special Programs. These students enroll for both semesters of their senior year, defending an Honors Proposal at the end of the first semester, and completing an Honors research project or essay and defending it in an oral exam by April 15th.

This course is designed to allow students to gain knowledge through experience in the environmental area, through work with government agencies, nonprofits, or companies. Students will be supervised by faculty members, and students must complete an agreed-upon list of readings and write a paper tying their experience to existing theory and research. Requires written permission from the Director and a faculty advisor.