NRES 287: Environment and Society

This is a large enrollment undergraduate course that broadly examines the relationships between environment and society. Multiple social science perspectives are reviewed over the course of the semester, including markets and commodities, institutions, environmental ethics, behavior change science, social constructions of nature, and environmental risks. Students in this class are encouraged to build critical thinking skills focused on contemporary problems in the interface between people and nature. This is a required course for all undergraduate students in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences.

NRES 598: Sustainability Science

Sustainability science has emerged as a discipline focused on the study of human-environment interactions with the goal of solving complex problems through applied interdisciplinary research. This graduate seminar course enables students to develop deep theoretical knowledge of key topical areas in sustainability science, and in turn, bridge gaps between science and practice using multiple scientific disciplines. The following cross-cutting themes relevant to sustainability science are addressed: (a) the emergence and historical foundations of sustainability science; (b) theorizing and the philosophy of science to address human impacts on the environment; (c) co-production of knowledge for transformational change; (d) transdisciplinarity to support the integration of disciplines; (e) inner transformations toward sustainability; and (f) human values and place-based research involving social-ecological systems.