Sustainability Education Resources

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/92

Curricular materials from UMass Amherst courses.

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Syllabus: Sustainable Living: Solutions for the 21st Century
(2015-01-01) Fletcher, Lena
In this innovative interdisciplinary course you will work with your peers to research and understand how sustainability in different contexts presents solutions to many problems facing modern society. You will work in teams to investigate, evaluate, communicate, and reflect on the multifaceted challenges associated with natural resource use, food systems, energy, transportation, waste, the built environment, water quality, and climate change. You will also research case studies, debate controversies, assess political and cultural contexts, investigate technological advances, and identify gaps in scientific knowledge. Using these resources, you and your peers will be tasked with developing your own sustainable solutions for the 21st century. The class will meet once a week in the new team-based learning classrooms in the Integrated Learning Center
Syllabus: Experiential Reflections on Public Policy, with a Spotlight on Sustainability
(2013-01-01) Carrere, Marissa
In this course, students will study a theoretical model for understanding and analyzing public policy, and they will apply this model to their professional and life experience. This course focuses on the application of theoretical material to narrative accounts of a student’s experience, with the goal of informing experience through interdisciplinary research. With a collaborative work environment and through regular small-group and full-class discussions, this course critically investigates real world public policy issues.
Syllabus: College of Natural Sciences, Junior Year Writing
(2013-01-01) McCutchen, Deborah
CNS JYW is a multidisciplinary professional writing course. Every discipline comes complete with instructions on how to think, talk, and write in order to act like a member of that discipline and to recognize and comprehend others within that field. This writing course brings these distinctions to life by focusing on both formal and informal argumentative and technical writing for different genres and audiences. Writing intensive, the course presents the methods of inquiry, evidentiary procedures, genres, and text conventions that characterize the way scholars and professionals craft written texts. The course reinforces college-level vocabulary, critical analysis, and textual evidence and referencing strategies, and extends their application to specific concerns and practices within the disciplines encompassed by the College of Natural Sciences. To support students’ research and referencing, the course reinforces and extends technology and information-based literacies introduced in previously required writing courses.
Syllabus: Urban Policies
(2014-01-01) Pader, Ellen
This class focuses on a significant and far-reaching federal policy, The Fair Housing Act (FHA), as a springboard to explore many facets of urban life and policy. The purpose of the FHA is to enable all people, regardless of race, religion, disability, national origin, sex, age or the presence of children under 18 in the family (plus other characteristics enacted by states and municipalities) the right to rent, buy and enjoy housing in any neighborhood they can afford. We explore how US cities and towns became segregated as a context for exploring other social policies including, but not limited to, housing, education, health, immigration, zoning, transportation, environmental justice, food security, industrial development, voting and predatory lending. With this foundation, we complete a project with the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center (MFHC). MFHC will use our work to inform their fair housing program. In addition, MFHC will train everyone to be a fair housing tester as a precursor to doing testing for them and helping with the analysis of those tests. In the Spring 2014 semester, students from this class organized, and got approved, a new UMass Registered Student Organization (RSO), Students for Fair Housing. We will help carry on that work. By the end of the term you will have a firm understanding of the implicit and explicit policies that created the ethnic and racial demographic distributions of the U.S., the importance of access to housing of choice, jobs, recreation, etc. and the profound implications of not having access. You will also have the satisfaction of knowing your class work will help inform the work of MFHC and provide you with valuable experience for your resume.
Understanding Food and Climate Change: A Systems Perspective
(2021-01-01) Brockelbank, Megan
Climate change will profoundly affect our lives in many ways, even down to the very food we eat. Food is essential for survival and our complex food system, and all that depends on it, face a big threat with climate change. Throughout the semester we will explore the links between the food system and our changing climate with an emphasis on systems thinking. In science we tend to segregate, looking at just one part of a system, while systems thinking looks at the whole picture. Using this approach, we will think critically about how to build a more resilient food system, considering everything from what farmers grow to how it is transported to the grocery store, that can mitigate some of the effects of climate change and make our food system more resilient in the face of climate change.
Syllabus: Wildlife Habitat Management
(2014-01-01) Warren, Paige
This course provides an in-depth exploration of wildlife-habitat relationships, illustrated through basic field zoology and natural history, evolutionary biology, and ecological theory. We introduce you to quantitative tools used to explain ecological processes and their influence on wildlife and their environment. We will examine the dynamics and management of various habitats in New England, North America, and elsewhere through field visits and use of primary literature. We will place particular emphasis on managing wildlife habitat in an urbanizing world. By one estimate, roughly 9% of the land area of the United States is in a zone of wildland-urban interface, but that figure rises above 60% for southern New England. In wildland-urban interfaces, homes intermingle with undeveloped wildland vegetation, and human activities can have profound impacts on animal species. Perhaps equally important, animals have the potential to affect humans, in both positive and negative ways. Human values, perceptions, and uses of open space become critical aspects of habitat management in wildland-urban interfaces. UMass campus provides us with a useful case study of managing habitat in places where people live and work. The campus is arguably the most ‘urban’ part of Hampshire County, with a residential population density higher than that of Springfield, MA and 6 of the 10 largest US cities. Yet, species like bobcats, fox, and peregrine falcons regularly occupy campus lands. In the lab component, students will work in teams to develop a habitat management plan for the UMass-Amherst campus. We will aim to provide real guidance to the Campus Sustainability Initiative and other long term planning efforts on campus. We will use a Team-Based Learning (TBL) approach in this class. Teamwork is an essential skill to learn in the field of wildlife habitat management. I am regularly asked to comment on former students’ skills at working in a team when I write letters of recommendation. In addition, I have seen that students working in teams perform better on quizzes and other exercises than even the highest performing students do on their own. In order to ensure fairness in grading, we will conduct regular peer evaluations of your team members, and these evaluations will contribute to the calculation of grades on all team-based assignments (see the section below on “Grading”). More information on TBL and the rationale behind this approach can be found at: http://www.umass.edu/ctfd/teaching/team-based.shtml
Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Adaptation Science
(2021-01-01) holland, Addie Rose; Woodruff, Jonathan; Staudinger, Michelle
Through this seminar we seek to engage and partner with environmental coordinators, scholars and elders from Tribal Nations to explore prominent examples of Indigenous climate adaptation science, models for collaboration on diverse knowledges in scientific research, and the co-creation of best practices for resilience and adaptation to our rapidly changing climate. Format: 3-week rotations of paired Tribal Elders/Knowledge Keepers and Tribal Scholars/Environmental Coordinators. Each module will focus on a particular climate related topic and will be matched to the particular expertise of the module’s pair of invitees.
Wildlife Habitat Management
(2019-01-01) Warren, Paige
The primary goal for this course is to help you put into practice tools you have been acquiring in your other Natural Resources Conservation courses. We will explore wildlife-habitat relationships in depth, through the lenses of basic field zoology and natural history, evolutionary biology, and ecological theory. We will introduce you to quantitative tools used to explain ecological processes and their influence on wildlife and their environment. We will examine the dynamics and management of various habitats in New England, North America, and elsewhere through field visits and use of primary literature. But most importantly, we will ask you to take on some of the responsibilities for gathering and synthesizing information about a particular piece of land and its associated wildlife in order to contribute to an ongoing management planning process for the Town of Amherst’s conservation lands.
Small Farm Husbandry: Cow, Sheep and Goat for Meat Production
(2020-01-01) Burton, Nicole
This course provides students with a farmer’s perspective on the sustainable management of cows, sheep and goats on a small farm. The course provides students with a clear understanding of how to think through the planning and management of cows, sheep and goats for meat production. All aspects from purchasing and nutrition to marketing and finances will be addressed. This course also brings awareness to the U.S. meat industry and supports students in becoming educated consumers and producers. Students will walk away with a rudimentary plan on how to incorporate ruminants into their small farm plan.
Transportation Sustainability
(2021-01-01) Christofa, Eleni
An overview of sustainable transportation planning practices and management strategies and policies; current transportation trends; environmental and energy policies; nonmotorized modes (mainly bicycles and pedestrians); public transportation; life-cycle assessment for transportation infrastructure; alternative fuel vehicles; vehicle emission estimation models; demand management strategies (including parking policies, pricing strategies).
Architecture Now: A History of Sustainable Architecture
(2019-01-01) Vickery, Meg
As we move further into the 21st century, architects, planners, landscape architects and the general public are increasingly concerned with climate change, environmental degradation, energy and water consumption and the role the built environment plays in contributing to or addressing these issues. Buildings consume almost 40% of the energy used in this country. The way we access buildings, the materials used to construct them, the demands of users within the building all require the earth’s increasingly precious resources. So how did we get here? How did our built environment evolve to require so much energy, water and so many resources? It is easy to think that our environmental concerns regarding architecture’s role in the environment are new to society. However, environmental worries are not new. This course explores the history of sustainable architecture with a look back to vernacular building styles and passive design strategies that addressed climatic factors. We will investigate the Industrial Revolution as it transformed buildings and transportation and study the varied responses to the degradation of the natural world through the Arts and Crafts Movement and writers and thinkers of the 19th century. We will contrast our study of early environmentalists and their ideas for the built environment with more mainstream efforts of architects and designers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including Frank Lloyd Wright and le Corbusier, to better understand the formation of architecture’s historical cannon and the environmental outliers who critiqued the dangers of the ‘Machine Age.’ We will then explore more accelerated trends of the 1960s and ‘70s that paralleled the birth of modern environmentalism in the wake of exposés such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Finally, the course will conclude with an examination of recent ideas surrounding ‘green’ buildings such as LEED certification and the Living Building Challenge. Understanding the history of the built environment offers a powerful lens for understanding our environmental future. Such history shows us our mistakes and successes and will help us move forward thinking critically about how we can live in the future. “History is not everything, but it is a starting point. History is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is a compass they use to find themselves on the map of human geography. It tells them where they are but, more importantly, what they must be.” John Henrik Clarke The course will include guest speakers, lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays, and discussions about readings on Fridays (in Dickinson 109). There will be a mid-term and final, and two written assignments: one a short, written response and the second, a longer research paper.
Governing Knowledge Commons
(2020-01-01) Schweik, Charlie
Over the last decade or more, there has been a detectable and growing dissatisfaction among students with the "status quo" in the way the society works. Students have witnessed terrorism, long-term war, a "great recession," the "Occupy" movement, effects of climate change and worse projections to come, and most recently, a global pandemic with a great impact on the economy. Many students are looking for models of hope and alternatives to the status quo on how society at local, regional and global levels might operate to collectively address problems. In this course, we will review historical and contemporary commons cases. [Note: Some of you might ask: “What exactly are commons”? This will be a question we will examine throughout the course, but I include three different definitions or descriptions in the box on the next page.] We will explore how these forms of social organization might be used to change the way we humans interact. Central to these discussions will be learning methods for studying commons governance, called "Institutional Analysis," and a focal activity in the course will be a project where we study the governance and management of one or more active commons cases. Our overall goal is to study and investigate both successful and unsuccessful cases, and get inspired.
Food Writing
(2019-01-01) Connare, Carol Ann
This advanced writing four-credit course approaches food writing from a news reporting perspective. The Pioneer Valley is home to a network of food producers, from farmers and cheesemakers to brewers and beekeepers. Students will travel into the field to meet people who make and grow what we eat, conducting interviews and collecting information to synthesize into multimedia stories for publication around themes such as health, history, travel, ecology, animal welfare, social change, nutrition, and home cooking. Students will experience the full spectrum of food writing—blogs, magazine articles, personal essays, reviews, recipes, social and cultural commentary—and create stories in a variety of these forms.
Environmental Decision-Making
(2021-01-01) Markowitz, Ezra
Over the past 30 years, there has been a growing recognition amongst environmental advocates, resource managers, policymakers and researchers that the underlying cause of most environmental, conservation and sustainability issues is human behavior. As NRC and ENVIRSCI majors, you have received extensive technical training in how natural systems operate yet relatively little training when it comes to influencing or understanding how people make environmental decisions that affect those natural systems. Recognizing the fundamental role that human decision-making plays in shaping the environment reveals a new set of tools and approaches for both understanding the challenges we face and confronting those challenges effectively. We will spend the semester exploring the underlying factors that drive environmental decisions, the key challenges that environmental issues pose for decision makers, and insights from the behavioral, social and communications sciences into designing effective environmental behavior change campaigns and strategies. In doing so, we will gain a greater appreciation for the importance of focusing on people when our aim, ultimately, is to protect the natural world.
Beyond Green Cars and Goddesses: Gender, the Global Environment, and Sustainability
(2021-01-01) Asher, Kiran
Gender, the environment and sustainability are key terms in debates about economic globalization and social justice. While not new, they are reemerging as part of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. This course will introduce students to the perceived and existing links between women, gender, and the global environment as they appear in 21st century discussions about sustainable development. Through readings, lectures and discussions will explore the following questions:  When did the environment and sustainability emerge as key biological and social issues on global agendas?  What are their connections to economic globalization? To colonialism and capitalism?  How did women and gender become part of these discussions?  How did governments, multilateral institutions (e.g. the United Nations, the World Bank), and development policies target third world women? Was it to meet their needs and address gender equality? Or was it for more efficient and effective environmental and sustainability outcomes?  What were the results and implications of these interventions?  In what guise are these interventions reemerging in the context of the “clean technology,” “green economy”, food security, and population and reproductive rights?  How have women across the world organized to address concerns about the environment and sustainability?  How have feminists engaged with issues of gender, the global environment and sustainability? Discussions and assignments will enable students to familiarize themselves with gender and sustainability concerns around the world in a way that will enable them to participate in 21st century discussions in informed, critical and self-reflexive ways.
Social and Environmental Enterprises
(2020-01-01) Schmidt, Elizabeth
Social and Environmental Enterprises examines organizations that place a social mission ahead of or on par with their financial mission. Students in this course take initial steps towards creating a fictional social mission enterprise, using tools such as systems thinking, design thinking, Lean Startup methodologies, impact measurement, and budget development. Once we understand the practical challenges and opportunities of these enterprises, we consider norms and public policies that can help social enterprises succeed--taxation, governance, finance measures, asset locks, and employment rules. We will have several guests over the course of the semester, who will also help us see how these enterprises work and what policies could help them work better.
Economics of the Renewable Energy Transition
(2021-01-01) Crago, Christine
Course Objectives: (1) Familiarize students with the energy sector and electricity markets (2) Equip students with analytical tools to examine economic problems related to the renewable energy transition (3) Provide an environment for conducting independent research while engaging with peers from other disciplines (4) Develop skills in self, peer, and group assessments (5) Develop skills in information searching and retrieval using library and public domain sources
Diversity, Globalization, and Sustainability: Introduction to Human Geography
(2021-01-01) Applegate, Toby
Diversity, Globalization, and Sustainability is a wide-ranging introduction to the ways people shape the world they live in. We will study the themes and concepts of human geography through the current issues and large questions that guide them. Lectures and reading will focus on the geographic aspects of cultural diversity, population issues, states vs. nations, the global economy, development, urbanization and the human transformation of the earth. We will cover major subdivisions of human geography including cultural geography, population geography, economic geography, social geography, political geography and environmental geography.
Classroom exercise: Intro to Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
(2015-01-01) Baker, Erin
This classroom exercise was developed for Introduction to Mechanical and Industrial Engineering; Engineering Sustainability: Energy and the Environment. This is a freshman class with a class size of about 200. It is intended to get students to think critically about energy in the economy; to recognize the power of technological change; and to inspire them to work toward solving climate change.
The Earth
(2021-01-01) Clement, William
The Earth is a 4-credit introduction to the Geosciences. This course is required for several majors in the College of Natural Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. These majors include Earth Systems, Environmental Science, and Geology. The course also fulfills a 4-credit Physical Science (PS) General Education requirement and may be an elective science course in a number of other majors. Our goal in Geology 101 is to provide a basic knowledge of how the Earth works, the role of the geologist in contemporary society, and the application of geologic knowledge in solving real world problems. These are broad themes that reflect the spirit and value of the general education curriculum that is part of your UMass experience. You should leave this course with greater understanding about the age and composition of the Earth, environments in which different rocks are found, processes that shape our landscape, and how these influence and shape our lives. You have enrolled in a course designed to inform you about the features and functions of our planet. You can expect to become better at observing the world around you, at understanding of geological processes that shape our landscapes, at applying logic to natural phenomena, and at recognizing that geologic processes, resources, and hazards greatly influence human society.

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