 |
|
|
AUNE Home
>
Environmental Studies
>
Sustainable Development and Climate Change
Course Descriptions
Building Sustainable Organizations course -
Field trip to Bensonwood Construction
The SDCC concentration requires 42 credits of academic work. The two required internships are a total of 6 credits and the final capstone project (either a Collaborative Service Initiative, a thesis, or an individual master's project) counts as 3 credits. The remaining 33 credits are for course work (11 courses). The course work requires four core courses that all student take (12 credits). The remaining 21 credits (7 courses) are a combination of required concentrations and methods/electives. The specific method/elective courses are developed through a dialogue between the student and her/his academic advisor that focuses on the goals of each student and their potential career objectives.
Required Core Courses:
12 credits (4 courses)
The four core courses - Earth Systems and Climate Change, Ecological Dynamics of the Landscape, Political Economy and Sustainability, and Leadership for Change - are designed to ensure all students are proficient in the foundational framework of environmental studies. Theoretical concepts, content, and skills acquired in these core classes are reinforced through subsequent courses, applied research, and professional internships. These core courses are designed to allow students to look at change and sustainability through multiple lenses.
Ecological Dynamics of Landscapes
This course examines the diversity of plant communities found in central New England with special attention to the impact of topography, substrate, and disturbance regimes on community composition and structure as a means to understand ecological community dynamics in any part of the world. As a largely field-based course, both qualitative and quantitative means will be used to describe community composition and structure, as well as the reasons for community placement. Eco-indicator species will be used to delineate specific topographic and edaphic sites, while evidence of various disturbances will be used to interpret successional patterns as a means for "reading the landscape." The course will have a strong grounding in concepts related to community ecology including dominance, diversity, niche structuring, and succession. Skills in plant community sampling, soil interpretation, and plant identification will also be developed. A number of outstanding representatives of community types in the central Connecticut River watershed will be visited.
Leadership for Change
Leadership for change is the art of structuring organizations and collaboration, building morale and vision, and facilitating group deliberation and decision-making to guide effective policy-setting and organizational work that makes a positive difference at the individual, interpersonal, organizational, field and societal levels. This course will help students develop the skills and understandings that support leadership that is adaptive, inclusive, participatory, collaborative, culturally competent, and effective. Participants in this class will be challenged to explore: 1) personal leadership competencies and styles; 2) group dynamics, inclusion, and team facilitation; 3) strategies for engaging diverse stakeholders; and 4) the capacity of creative leadership to facilitate large-scale systemic change.
Earth Systems and Climate Change
This course employs a systems approach to understanding earth's physical and biological environment by examining the large-scale components and processes of the earth system. Understanding the interaction of these elements and their natural variability in space and time is critical for assessing the rates, drivers, and consequences of environmental change. Content will emphasize climate change dynamics, biogeochemical cycles, and land use patterns and their feedback relationships with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, pedosphere and diosphere.
Political Economy and Sustainability
Political economy seeks to explain how political institutions, the economic system, applied sciences, and social movements interact over time. This course will focus on how these dynamics generate varied outcomes in relation to the goals of sustainability, justice, and economic well-being. Students will examine the political and economic roots of the global sustainability crisis. Students will assess political and economic reforms, policy processes, and policy tools that might yield better outcomes. Students will also develop a greater understanding of possible action strategies from within civil society, the business sector, government, and/or international bodies for creating a transition toward a more sustainable society.
Required Concentration-Area Courses: 6 credits (2 courses)
Concentration area courses provide additional knowledge and skills for students in their area of specialization. The two required courses are: Climate Change, Adaptation, and Mitigation, and Environmental Assessment Techniques.
Environmental Assessment Techniques
This course is useful for anyone who will be working to preserve, conserve or manage land-use and water resource decisions. The course content reviews, and allows student to practice, field assessment approaches so as to evaluate potential or actual impacts from human activities, both at the watershed level and for a specific parcel of land. Such procedures range from the formalized ASTM Phase I site assessment procedures to techniques for documenting watershed health and mitigating potential non-point source pollution. Skills to be developed are for anyone entertaining the possibility of working for a land trust, watershed association, a planning agency or a consultancy that focuses on landowner regulatory compliance and liability issues.
Climate Change, Adaptation, and Mitigation
The goal of this course is to increase students' breadth and depth of understanding of, and discourse in, adaptation strategies that span changes to technologies and management strategies to changes in social organization and related institutions. The course will address how to evaluate the robustness of social-ecological systems and the ramifications this has on the management of resources on the landscape into the future. Skill development in evaluating potential adaptation strategies, at different scales, will be introduced, and the concepts of uncertainty and risk identification, assessment and decision analysis.
Methods/Electives Courses: 15 Credits (5 courses)
Additional 5 methods/Elective courses are required. Method/elective courses to support a student's critical path. Methods courses focus on core skills. Course selection, in consultation with the faculty advisor, will be based on students' professional experience, prior academic work, and professional career path. Examples include: Building Sustainable Organizations; Energy and Materials Sustainability; Geomorphology; Land Use and Community Planning; Soil Ecology and the Landscape; Financial Administration; Geographic Information Systems, Proposal Writing and Project Management; Environmental Law; Mammalogy; Ornithology; Herpetology; New England Flora; Natural Resource Inventory; Research Design and Assessment; Principles of Sustainability and; Social Aspects of Conservation and Development. A few example course descriptions are provided below.
Building Sustainable Organizations
BSO surveys the landscape of sustainability theory and literature by considering organizational purpose, design and behavior through the lenses of ecology, management, economics and social justice. This course prepares students to analyze organizations from the perspective of sustainable practices, and to develop an understanding of the importance of self-knowledge and personal sustainability. BSO is designed to serve as a gateway for further study. The course relies on heavily active participation by all class members, drawing from each participant's previous organizational and managerial experiences.
Energy and Materials Sustainability
Individuals, either as a consumer, an employee or someone who lives on the landscape, are learning to become more environmentally responsible and realize true savings through adopting sustainability driven policies and practices. In this course we will examine how the emerging field of materials and energy sustainability can help individuals and organizations to become more effective at reducing their ecological footprint. This course is based on the premise that the material and energy flow throughout one's home or business is part of a greater life cycle which stretches from raw material extraction through the manufacturing stages and onto consumer and post-consumer stages. We will discuss concepts in the areas of waste reduction, pollution prevention, energy efficiency, environmental management and life cycle analysis to equip participants with the tools they need to understand and potentially reduce environmental impact within the different domain of their lives.
Land Use and Community Planning
The objective of this course is to provide students with an overview of land use issues and community planning concepts and techniques. The course will introduce landscape ecology principles to build a foundation for sustainable land use planning at a broad scale. We will discuss ethical and legal implications for land use decision-making and develop analytic skills for determining appropriate uses given site specific conditions. The class will then focus on planning techniques at the community scale, covering topics such as master planning, zoning, and sub-division and site plan regulation.
Financial Administration
The overall goal of the course is to introduce students to the principles of financial administration as applied to the management of organizations. This course is designed for students with little or no financial background. The course has the objectives for the student to: become familiar with the language of finance, essential for those who will play a role in managing the financial resources of an organization; understand the basics of the financial system and its components; learn the principles of preparing an annual and capital budget; gain experience in setting up and using spreadsheets; develop skills in the analysis, interpretation, and use of financial information; become familiar with the principles of time value of money; review the principles of investment and retirement accounts; and become familiar with the key components of an annual financial audit and systems of internal control. The course will focus on gaining competency in financial management skills as directed towards running an organization.
Geographic Information Systems
This is an introductory course in the use of GIS software to create, manage and work with spatially explicit data. This class will explore how to access GIS information available on the WWW, extract and analyze quantitative data using ArcGIS 9.x software, understand limitations associated with various data sources and use software for preparation of maps.
Proposal Writing and Project Management
This course will focus on gaining competency in the three phases of the grants process: planning, research, and writing. Students will research and explore public and private funding sources appropriate to the human services and environmental fields. The criteria for selecting potential funding sources, the basic elements of a proposal, and developing successful collaborative efforts will be emphasized. Students will interactively engage in each phase of the process and will demonstrate their learning through submission of a proposal abstract and evidence of research in the public and private sectors.
Quantitative & Qualitative Research Techniques
The purpose of this course is to gain a basic understanding of quantitative and qualitative research approaches so that students, in their professional life, can assess research reports that must be evaluated in order to develop policy and/or to inform implementation. The material presented is done at a depth and breadth to provide a basic understanding of how research is done and why specific techniques and approaches are used for answering specific questions. Students will try out different methodological approaches that include basic statistical analysis and design, field techniques, and computer models. Through the development of a research proposal, you will ground discussions of theory in the practical concerns of research: framing research questions; designing a small study; collecting and analyzing data; dealing with validity, reliability, and ethical issues; and writing a research report.
Capstone Options
To earn a Master's degree, all students have to complete one Capstone Option. SDCC students have 3 capstone options. All three options allow a student to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and competencies. These options include:
- Thesis
- Master's Project
- Collaborative Service Initiative
Collaborative Service Initiative
A collaborative service initiative entails a substantive applied research, evaluation and/or consultation project that is linked to an external partner's identified need. This team service learning project applies skills and knowledge gained through the Master's Environmental Studies courses and internships. These collaborative service initiatives will emphasize:
- An interdisciplinary team of students and faculty with a faculty mentor;
- Achievement of community service learning goals that reflects the ES mission;
- Commitment from external partners in the form of time; mentoring; and access to relevant information, resources and individuals.
Master's Thesis
The Master's Thesis should reflect the student's particular focus of study and future professional interest. Students develop a research hypothesis or question and the appropriate methodology to test that hypothesis or questions. This effort includes a data collection component and the analysis and interpretation of that data framed within a theoretical context. The research approach can be based on quantitative or qualitative research and literature review.
Master's Project
The Master's Project differs from the Master's Thesis in that the Project will typically be more descriptive in focus and usually will not be defined by formal hypothesis-testing of theoretical concepts. The Master's Project will often follow standardized approaches used in a student's chosen field such as development of a regional land use plan, completion of a natural resource inventory, or preparation of a high school curriculum. Master's Projects will be expected to be professional in their presentation, but need not adhere to AUNE's formal Thesis Guidelines.
© 2012 Antioch University New England, 40 Avon Street, Keene, NH 03431-3516 800.553.8920