Sustainability StudiesCertificate

This course is a study of the world's food needs with emphasis on the problems and policies of developing nations. The course will examine the evolution from hunter-gatherer to domesticated agriculture and the role agriculture currently plays in the sustainability of economic and political progress of developing nations and the ethical and environmental implications.

This course will introduce students to the structure of earth's ecosystems and to environmental issues, past and present from a biological science perspective. Students will be able to observe and interpret the relative health of environmental systems, and to connect this to the role of humans in sustaining life on earth. To reach this understanding, students will read classic environmental literature as well as current environmental literature. The course will include discussions, field trips and guest speakers as well as student involvement in a campus or local environmental effort. During this course students will be encouraged to recognize that their lives are dependent upon the environment, and that their personal decisions affect the entire natural world. Graded only.

This course introduces students to the principles of 'Sustainability' within the global, national, regional, and local contexts. This course will increase students' literacy of the three interconnected 'pillars' of sustainable systems, the ecosystem, human society, and the economy. To develop these literacies, students will begin by investigating the perils that currently effect each system, for example, resource depletion, species extinction, pollution, and global warming in the ecosphere; population growth, social inequality, disease, violence and conflict in human societies; and imperialism, unemployment, consumerism and waste in the global economy. The majority of the course will focus on social institutions and organizations that are re-imagining our common future by rethinking and redesigning how we live. Students will learn of new and innovative uses of renewable resources, production processes, and human capital; alternative forms of energy, transportation, building materials, food production, media, education, and urban planning; and new ways to build coalitions, community, trust, and democratic participation. Case studies will highlight sustainability practices in different parts of the world from a variety of perspectives.