ENV Environmental Studies Courses at Global Campus

This course introduces students to the scientific information and key concepts that underlie thefunctioning of earth’s systems with emphasis on how these systems are shaped by human activities.Students examine the social, economic, political, ethical, and technical dimensions related toenvironmental issues and solutions. Topics include population growth, natural environmental cycles,industrialized food systems, air and water pollution, and urbanization.

This course focuses on sustainable development from a cross-disciplinary approach, including, economics, management, education, policy, and science. Students discuss sustainability conflicts at the national and international levels, and use online simulations to understand and evaluate sustainability practices.   Topics include zero waste, water management, smart growth, green technology, global change, renewable energy, agriculture, and land management.  

This course is designed to provide knowledge relative to the relationship between energy consumption,energy generation, their related externalities, and conservation in the context of diminishing reserves of fossil fuels and increasing availability of renewable resources. Students will defend a position related to a particular energy source and its effect on the environment.

This course examines recent and ongoing efforts, as well as future needs, to better understand how to attain transformational and sustainable changes to benefit our global environment and its people. It is critical to assess various interventions from an environmental, social, and economic perspective as each of these dimensions impact development and progress. Diverse approaches from multiple fields, such as climate change, renewable energy, natural resource management, and conservation are explored.

This course examines the ecological and evolutionary processes across several levels of organization,including individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems. Students analyze the interactions among organisms and between organisms and their environment, with an emphasis on natural selection.  The course demonstrates the methods used by ecologists to answer questions about ecological systems including experimental, statistical, theoretical modeling, and visual representations of data. Prerequisites: ENV 111.

This course is a study of the ethical dimensions of selected contemporary environmental controversies.Students will examine the major theoretical approaches to environmental ethics, value systems, and specific issues including biodiversity and wilderness preservation.

Following the guidelines set by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its subsequent modifications, students will learn the fundamental methods of analysis required for conducting a robustEnvironment Impact Statement (EIS). Students will learn the fundamental elements of an EIS through the examination of contemporary cases.

This course explores perspectives and real- world examples that underscore the opportunities surrounding environmental sustainability for businesses. Corporate and government-based policies provide a foundation for developing strategies pertaining to sustainability. Students evaluate environmental challenges and related practical solutions that are ethical and financially sound.

Conservation biology examines the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss, conservation approaches and strategies, and the ecological and evolutionary theory used in these approaches. Students evaluate practices that conserve biological diversity at the gene, population, ecosystem, landscape and global scales. The course incorporates topics in culture, ethics, economics and politics to monitor and protect global biodiversity. Prerequisite: ENV 326.

This course introduces students to the various stages in the environmental research process. Course design focuses intensely on scientific journal article construction as well as research design, data collection, and statistical analysis.