This course will prepare students for a trip to sites in the Columbia River basin of significance to environmental policy decisions and future of salmon and guided rafting trip on the Middle Fork Salmon River. The partial credit course will cover safety issues, outline pertinent environmental discussions, and promote bonding.
This course examines the effects of water use, dams, and habitat on salmon in the Columbia basin through multi-disciplinary perspectives including art, history, policy, and ecology. Water and Wild Nature in the Columbia Basin begins in the summer. A series of readings will prepare students for a two week summer study away component and optional one week rafting trip on the Middle Fork Salmon river. Pacific Northwest history, identity, Lower and Upper Columbia tribes' cultural practices, climate change, and ecology will inform this course's content.
Work experience related to an academic program in environmental studies. Actual placements are determined by mutual agreement between the student and program faculty.
Work experience related to an academic program in environmental studies. Actual placements are determined by mutual agreement between the student and program faculty.
Independent study is available to those students who wish to continue their learning in an area after completing the regularly offered courses in that area.
Independent study is available to those students who wish to continue their learning in an area after completing the regularly offered courses in that area.
This course analyzes one current environmental issue from the perspectives of the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Students collectively examine the case from different disciplinary perspectives in an attempt to understand issues in their full complexity. Students conduct an in-depth research project on issues and present their findings in an open forum. Students formulate their own problem-solving approach to environmental problems and recognize how their approach connects to the work of others.
This course is designed to provide a general overview of natural history museum uses and practices. Natural history museums were the primary locus for biological research in the 18th and 19th centuries. They represent invaluable archives of Earth's biodiversity; their vast collections of specimens provide a temporal and geographic record of life unmatched by written or illustrated accounts. They document variation -- the foundation of evolution -- in time and space and allow biologists to make comparisons that are difficult or impossible to observe in the field.
The course examines the intersection of environmental issues with politics and policy-making on a global as well as a local scale. It explores international structures and efforts to deal with environmental problems, a wide range of particular environmental challenges such as climate change and conservation, and the different experiences of individual countries in trying to use and manage their natural resources.
Eating food is critical to everyday life, and yet many have the luxury to treat daily sustenance as an afterthought. For some, the connections between food and the larger environmental and social systems that sustain human life are largely invisible. This experiential course explores these interactions through an extensive and intensive investigation of the Northwest food system from farm to fork.