Introduction to Environmental Studies | Lower Division Seminar | Syllabus here
All human life is imbedded within natural environments. This course teaches students to analyze the systemic interaction of human beings with their environments, to identify the interests and values that inform people’s decisions about how to treat the world around them, and to engage in informed advocacy on environmental issues. Human interactions with their environments encompass activities as local and ordinary as eating lunch or taking a shower, and issues as global and urgent as the survival of species and global climate change. This course explores the environmental interconnection between ordinary, local actions and global issues of survival
Environmental Policy | Upper Division Seminar | Syllabus here
This course introduces the processes by which policy is made at local, state, national (i.e., U.S.), and international levels of government with attention to the special challenges of creating sound environmental policy. Together we will examine the strengths and weaknesses of policies currently in place and explore proposals for new policy solutions for the most pressing environmental problems of our times. This course is designed to provide students experience in thinking and writing about policies on a breadth of environmental topics as well as in-depth engagement with an environmental policy issue. Students' written work in this course is intended for an audience of legislators, environmental organizations, and the public in taking action on environmental issues. Students will also be prepared to take action on an environmental policy issue of their choice.
Underwood International College at Yonsei University
Transforming Food Systems: Science, Technology, and Policy | Upper Division Seminar | Syllabus here
Over the past 150 years, food systems have been transformed by developments in technology, science, and policy. At the same time that these changes have improved the human condition, they have also created new challenges. For instance, new technologies in farming equipment and synthetic fertilizers vastly increased the per-acre output of farms, but also contributed to the collapse of rural communities and the eutryphication of water ways. This class examines how the relationship between society and food has affected and been affected by the intertwined forces of industrialization, urbanization, and globalization. We will interrogate positions that the industrial food system is 'inevitable' or 'indispensible' to feeding a global population of 9 billion. This class will explore how technology and policy has helped bring about societies in which high levels of obesity, food insecurity, and food waste coexist. Students will examine critical case studies (e.g. GMOs, biofuels) to learn how these challenges are understood as policy problems and how science and technology are mobilized to address these problems.
Research Design and Quantitative Methods | Lower Division Lecture | 4 sections | Syllabus here
This course introduces students to the core methodological concepts and procedures used in empirical research in the social sciences. Students will learn the fundamental concepts and practices of research methodology. This includes methodological epistemology, research design, research question development, hypotheses generation and testing, data collection and analysis, communication of findings, and ethical principles. Students who complete this course will be able to situate their research in the existing body of literature as well as to evaluate the merits and shortcomings of existing research. The course will cover both quantitative and qualitative methods and while basic statistics will be covered, this is not a statistics course.
University of California Irvine
Urban Sociology | Lower Division Lecture | Syllabus here
This course introduces students to the major perspectives, theories, and issues related to people, cities, and urbanization. We will critically examine several topics including the historical and contemporary drivers and outcomes of urbanization; race and class stratification; theories about how cities are socially and spatially organized; and the influence that this organization has on social interaction, individual and group outcomes, and the environment.