Environmental Studies Program

Humans are changing the biosphere in unprecedented ways, leading to two of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced: meeting the needs of people today and in the future, and sustaining the life support systems on the planet. Transitioning to a sustainable biosphere requires that we cultivate integrative, global thinking while marshaling new knowledge, tools, and approaches. Answering current problems requires scientific and social expertise, as well as the ability to understand complex socio-environmental interactions and to integrate seemingly disparate forms of knowledge.

As a field, environmental studies seeks to understand natural phenomena and human social institutional beliefs and practices and their interrelationships. To do this, it must engage in the scholarship of particular disciplines, as well as in the scholarship of integration. Goucher’s Environmental Studies Program is designed to encourage thinking across disciplinary boundaries in order to prepare students for meaningful engagement with the central environmental questions and challenges that face our societies today and for their role as stewards of the global environment. The program offers students a major and a minor designed to encourage thinking across disciplinary boundaries, with a curriculum that bridges the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Students learn to understand the premises of diverse disciplines while developing skills such as systems thinking—the ability to think systematically about complex problems.

Program Faculty

Associate Professor

                       Germán Mora, director and Meyerhoff associate professor

Assistant Professor

                       Emily Billo

Postdoctoral Associate

                       Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern

Affiliated Faculty

Associate Professors

                       Sasha Dukan (physics), Cynthia Kicklighter (biology), Shirley Peroutka (communications and media studies)

Assistant Professors

                    Birthe Kejellerup (biology), Gina Shamshak (economics)

Goucher Semester-Abroad Program at the Monteverde Institute in Costa Rica

• BIO 243 - Field Methods in Tropical Ecology (4 Cr.)
• BIO 244 - Environmental Sustainability (4 Cr.)