Goucher College 2015-2016 Undergraduate Catalogue 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
Goucher College 2015-2016 Undergraduate Catalogue PLEASE NOTE: This is an archived catalog. Programs are subject to change each academic year.

Environmental Studies Program


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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, Mark Salvaggio

Lecturer

   Robert Neff

 

Postdoctoral Fellow

   Jessica Hejny

 

Affiliated Faculty

Associate Professors

                     Sasha Dukan (physics), Cynthia Kicklighter (biology)

Assistant Professors

                    Gina Shamshak (economics)


Selected Goucher study-abroad courses:

  • Monteverde Institute Costa Rica
  • Environmental Studies in Ecuador

 

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