Sustainability in Academics

An overview of the relationship of agriculture to other aspects of culture through time and cross-culturally, including the origins of agriculture; the role of agriculture in subsistence and trade and its connection to social structure, religion, and values; and the rise of industrial agriculture and agriculture in Iowa.

An introduction to the chemistry of the atmosphere, natural waters, soils, and sediments, emphasizing chemical pollution and pollution prevention. Topics include:

• atmospheric pollution,
• persistent organic pollutants,
• agrochemicals,
• heavy metal contamination, and
• emerging contaminants.

Two classes, one laboratory each week.

An introductory geology course that demonstrates that Earth systems (the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere) are dynamically linked by internal and external physical, chemical, and biological processes.

Using process-response models, we examine:

• the structure and evolution of the Earth,
• how the rock record is used to decipher Earth’s past and predict its future, and
• societal issues centered on the environment, land use, resources (water, mineral, and energy), and natural hazards.

Three lectures and one laboratory each week.

This course will address issues salient to place-based education, an educational philosophy that construes local communities (environmental and social), indigenous knowledge practices, and service-learning as the curricular building blocks of a broadly defined education.

Readings will include works addressing eco-justice, the broader social purposes of education, and the politics of place. Globalization and its intersections with notions of “the local” will also be a focus.

Global environmental issues discussed from the perspective of how these problems relate to each student. Emphasis on the geological, biological, and human history of Earth:

• trends in global climate (including the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion),
• species diversity (including episodes of mass extinction),
• human demography,
• international energy policies, and
• global distribution of resources (including famine, lifeboat ethics, and the politics of north vs. south).

This course includes discussion of sustainable development of tropical forest, savanna, and marine ecosystems and readings from texts and current literature.

This course explores international water issues, focusing on the environmental, social, economic, and political implications of water scarcity. Emphasis will be on three interrelated topics:

• water scarcity as a constraint on development,
• water scarcity as a source of domestic and international conflict, and, in particular,
• the environmental implications of water supply projects and their social and economic consequences.

Water management policy and the implications of changing climate on regional water availability will also be considered.

An investigation of the economics of renewable and nonrenewable natural resources with particular emphasis on the relationship between the biological and physical characteristics of particular resources and our economic choices. Includes consideration of selected current problems.

This course examines some of the central issues and debates in American environmental history, ranging from the era of pre-contact to the present day. Key topics will include:

• the shifting patterns of land use and resource management among Native American and settler communities,
• the ecological transformations wrought by commercial agriculture and industrial capitalism,
• the evolution of environmental policy, and
• the changing ways in which people have conceptualized and interacted with the natural world around them.

What are environmental ethics and why are they necessary? How should we understand the human-nature relationship? Is nature instrumentally valuable or intrinsically valuable? What special ethical challenges do global climate change and the global food system pose?

This class aims to introduce students to both anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric perspectives on these questions and will consider, in particular, the approaches of “enlightened anthropocentrism,” the land ethic, deep ecology, ecofeminism, and the environmental justice movement.