TEACHING & EDUCATION

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WE ARE COMMITTED TO EDUCATION

Teaching is central to the mission of the CEJ and we are currently working on developing a Graduate level Certificate. Below is an in-progress list of EJ courses at CSU. Please let us know if your course should be included here.

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ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE CLASS LIST

AGRI 510 Sustainable Agriculture

An interdisciplinary study comparing conventional and alternative land management practices, using an agroecosystem analysis approach.

ANTH 530 Human-Environment Interactions

Paradigms and concepts in ecological anthropology with an emphasis on adaptation and resilience.

ANTH 617 Place, Space and Adaptation

Critical evaluation of the nexus between space, society and environment. An interdisciplinary approach to studying the ways biological, material, historical, political-economic and cultural processes combine to shape human-environment relationships in place-based contexts.

AREC 507 Applied Welfare and Policy Analysis

How policies are crafted to effectively address social issues, especially for agriculture and the environment, and how they impact society.

AREC/ECON 540 Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Theory, methods, and policy in environmental and natural resource economics.

AREC/ECON 740 Advanced Natural Resource Economics

Advanced theory, methods, and literature in natural resource economics, including dynamic programming and optimal control.

AREC/ECON 741 Advanced Environmental Economics

Advanced theory, methods, and literature in environmental economics.

ATS/GES 440 Sea Level Rise and a Sustainable Future

This course provides an overview of sea level rise (SLR), with lectures on basic geophysics of SLR, the projected future impacts from climate models, and uncertainty around these projections. The impacts of SLR are discussed in a historical, present, and future context, focusing on social, cultural, economic, and political dimensions. This course is highly interdisciplinary and is designed to be accessible and engaging to students from across the university. Instructor: Patrick Keys

ATS 556 Climate Intervention to Cool a Warming Planet

Introduction to the climate system and its modification by human activities, different potential climate intervention methods, and the social, legal and political issues salient to the topic.

ATS 716 Air Quality Characterization

Ambient air pollution is a burden that is not evenly shared. This graduate course is centered on a service learning project where students partner with a community to design, plan, and execute a hypothesis-driven air pollution measurement campaign over the course of the semester. Through this exercise, students will examine environmental injustice in an air pollution context, and gain an in-depth understanding of a particular environmental justice case in Colorado. They will learn to design, propose, and execute community-centered air pollution research, gain familiarity with multiple new low-cost air pollution monitoring technologies, and learn to communicate scientific findings centered on community concerns.

BUS 634 Sustainable Venturing and New Energy Economy

Presents entrepreneurs and innovators as powerful agents who can drive our movement to a sustainable economy and environment. Integrates intellectual foundations of economics with entrepreneurial thinking and applied knowledge of the energy industry. Through simulations, readings, examples and assignments, focuses on specific venture strategies that are being utilized to capture economic opportunities in various sectors.

BUS 638 Sustainability Ethics and Business Practice

Explore the ethical rationale for a sustainable economy and sustainable business. Discuss philosophical, economic, and business perspectives on sustainability ethics. Analyze the ethical underpinnings of sustainability and the implications for a sustainable economy. Examine prominent business ethic instruments that drive sustainable business practices.

CHEM 555 Chemistry of Sustainability

The central role of chemistry for achieving sustainability in key areas including chemicals and materials, energy, and environment.

CIVE 544 Water Resources, Planning, and Management

Management and planning of natural and constructed water systems. Integrated management and case studies of water use and environmental resources.

CIVE 578 Infrastructure & Utility Management

Infrastructure and utility planning, management, and security. Systems approach to life cycle management. Problems, analysis, decision support systems. 

CON 521 Sustainable Building and Infrastructure Systems

Issues and state-of-the-art resources needed to construct, remodel/retrofit, operate and maintain the built environment (buildings and infrastructure). Specifically, resources will include major materials, components and technologies, as well as energy and water resources are needed in the different life-cycle phases of the building or infrastructure project.

E 636 Environmental Literature and Criticism

Literary, critical, and theoretical representations of nature, animals, human-environment relations.

ECON 240 Economics of Environmental Sustainability

Professor Joanne Burgess Barbier is leading this course after being awarded a Sustainability Curriculum Innovation Grant from SoGES.

ECON 792E Seminar: Development

Professor Joanne Burgess Barbier is leading this course after being awarded a Sustainability Curriculum Innovation Grant from SoGES.

ERHS 501 Biological Basis of Public Health

This course is designed for students from diverse backgrounds, providing a foundation in biological and clinical concepts relevant to public health and epidemiology.

ERHS 520 Environmental and Occupational Health Issues

Issues in environmental and occupational health sciences in the context of public health and regulatory concerns.

ERHS 560 Health impact Assessment

This course introduces Health Impact Assessment (HIA), emphasizing health equity and practical application across various sectors. 

ESS 501 Principles of Ecosystem Sustainability

Principles of ecosystem sustainability and threats to sustainability. Students will investigate and develop case studies.

ESS 505 International Climate Negotiations

Preparation for international climate negotiations including the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Conference of the Parties (COP) in locations around the world. Explore environmental sustainability issues on international teams with peers from other institutions. Teams examine environmental issues/policies through a research project, and have the opportunity to prepare for actual climate action negotiations.

ESS 506 Virtual International Climate Negotiations

Provides hands-on experience in international climate negotiations including the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Conference of the Parties (COP) in locations around the world through virtual participation. Explore environmental sustainability issues on international teams with peers from other institutions. Teams examine environmental issues/policies through a research project, and have the opportunity to participate in actual climate action negotiations..

ESS/NR 516 Climate Justice and Policy

Overview on i) the unequal distribution of the benefits of natural resource use and the burdens of environmental degradation across spatiotemporal scales, and ii) the role of policy tools and approaches in creating, exacerbating, or addressing those inequalities. Examine environmental and climate justice (EJ/CJ) concepts, recognize environmental and climate inequalities, and learn how to integrate EJ/CJ considerations in policy analysis and review.

ESS 582A-D Study Abroad: UN Climate Change Conference

Provides hands-on experience in international climate negotiations including the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Conference of the Parties (COP). Explore environmental sustainability issues on international teams with peers from institutions around the world. Teams examine environmental issues/policies through a research project, and have the opportunity to participate in actual climate action negotiations at the UN Climate Conference.

ETST 258 Race, Sex, and Climate Change

How the world's poor and minorities self-empower to challenge institutional racism and government apathy in order to secure basic environmental goods. 

ETST 365 Global Environmental Justice Movements

Climate change necessitates a critical perspective on forms of social configuration and worldly lives. Students will study the intense and intimate entanglements of race and sex with climate change. Race and sex are embroiled within Climate Change in explicit forms of access to resources and health, but also in terms of racial capitalism, human/non-human matterings, and the (im)possibilities of queer forms of life and death.

ETST 414 Development in Indian Country

Critical examination of history, public policy, and tribal strategies for economic development and natural resource management in Indian country. 

ETST 420 Disability, Race, Gender in the Environment

Historical and contemporary examination of the intersections between disability, race, and gender within environmental histories, discourses, and movements. 

ETST 550 Indigenous Law, Policy, and Peoples

Laws and policies impacting indigenous women, children, families, and communities in North America, New Zealand, and Australia.

ETST 573 Critical Disability Studies

Critical disability studies focusing on the social and cultural constructions of disability within intersectional frameworks.

FW 310 Mapping Diverse Perspectives in Conservation

Principles and geospatial tools to explore conservation science and practice through diverse social and cultural perspectives. Through discussions and hands-on mapping exercises, develop a spatial understanding of diverse perspectives and social justice issues in conservation, including mapping local ecological knowledge, patterns of environmental injustice, hotspots of biological and cultural diversity, human-wildlife conflict, and non-colonialist geographies. No GIS experience required. Instructor: Sara Bombaci

GES 520 Issues in Global Environmental Sustainability

Analysis of the different major dimensions/definitions of sustainability in current issues involving environmental, social and economic systems.

GES/CIVE 528 Assessing the Food, Energy, Water Nexus

A broad overview of Food/Energy/Water (FEW) nexus issues, including the science underpinning FEW and the trade-offs, socio-economic constraints, and policy limitations inherent in FEW challenges. Introduction to tools that enhance systems-level thinking and problem solving.

HIST 539 Reading Seminar: World Environmental History

Major works in the field of world environmental history and the major historiographical debates.

MECH 516 Life Cycle and Techno-Economic Assessment

Techniques for effective sustainability assessment of engineering process and products, including factors such as upstream energy and material burdens, model boundaries, sensitivity analysis, end of life, material and energy recycling, scalability, and optimization. Engineering process models will be used to assess technologies through economic feasibility and life cycle impacts.

NR 625 Community-Based Natural Resource Management

History, theory, practice, and evaluation of community-based natural resource management.

NRRT 673 Decolonial Feminist Political Ecology

Explores the origins of political ecology and evolution of decolonial feminist political ecology scholarship that interrogates historical and current colonial processes and structures, drawing from the scholarship of color.

PBHL 530 Environmental Public Health and Policy

Major concepts, methodologies and issues in the field of environmental public health.

PBHL 692A Seminar: Animals, People, and the Environment

Current public health issues related to interactions among people, animals, and our environment.

PHIL 565 Seminar in Environmental Philosophy

Aesthetic appreciation of nature, duties concerning fauna, flora, endangered species, ecosystems.

POLS 367 Power, Equity, and Inclusion in Environmental Justice

Examines procedural environmental injustice, as defined by the exclusion of marginalized groups from decision-making processes and the underenforcement of environmentally protective regulations in marginalized communities. Exploration of the degree to which power, equity and inclusion in policy processes create and perpetuate marginalization, weaving a single case study throughout the semester for illustration.

POLS 442 Environmental Politics in Developing World

Examines environmental politics in developing countries and evaluates climate change, natural resource governance, and environmental justice. 

POLS 462 Globalization, Sustainability, and Justice

Public and private policies to promote sustainability and social justice in a globalizing world.

POLS 670 Politics of Environment and Sustainability

Domestic, international, and comparative dimensions of environment and natural resource politics and policy.

POLS 672 Power, Justice, and Democracy

Examines research related to the key themes of power, development, democracy, inequality, justice, labor/work, and social transformation. Analyze themes through a variety of theoretical literatures and practical examples.

POLS 692 Seminar in Environmental Policy

This seminar explores questions of social and environmental justice during green/sustainability transitions through the lens of the concept of just transition. A just transition is one that is socially and ecologically just towards the people and natures affected by a transition. In this seminar, in fact, we will expand the universe of transitions in a variety of ways, particularly to reflect your interests. First we will assume that all social transitions are also environmental and all environmental transitions are also social. Second, we will move beyond energy to address a range of sociotechnical transitions, including  transitions in the organization of production and consumptions and the nature of work (The Future of Work). Third, we will also focus on social transitions, whether related to gender, race, ethnicity or class. Finally, because of the foundational significance of global social divisions of labor, this seminar will be particularly attune to questions of positionality across and within borders. Thus this is not a seminar exclusively and narrowly on just green transitions but, rather, uses the concept to explore broader debates in green political economy and political ecology with particular attention to socioecological justice, power and democracy. Instructor Dimitris Stevis. 

POLS 709 Environmental Politics in the U.S.

Selected primary materials on governmental performance, groups, and mass public in American environmental politics.

POLS 729 Political Theory and the Environment

Political thought applied to questions of the environment.

POLS 739 International Environmental Politics

Theories and methodologies used in analyzing international environmental politics and policy.

POLS 749 Comparative Environmental Politics

Application of comparative political theory to analysis of environmental politics.

POLS 759 Environmental Policy and Administration

Effects of regulation, intergovernmental relations, and resource availability on federal environmental programs in U.S.

SOC 220 Environmental, Food, and Social Justice

The course is designed to critically evaluate the complex interaction between social systems and the environment. In doing so, pressing environmental issues are investigated using environmental sociological theories. The primary goal of the course is to examine why and how environmental benefits and burdens are unequally distributed among different classes, races, genders, and nationalities and what are the consequences of the unequal distribution. Identifying and investigating possible solutions to the problems is also one of the major goals of the course. - Instructor, Azmal Hossan

SOC 322 Introduction to Environmental Justice

This introductory course explores and analyzes vital topics related to environmental degradation, human health, and social activism. More specifically, how are environmental problems experienced by different racial/ethnic groups, social classes, and genders? How do access to financial resources or geographic location impact people’s exposure to environmental toxins? What roles do corporations, governments, communities, and social movements play in these outcomes?

SOC 323 Soc. of Environmental Cooperation and Conflict

Roles of government and civil society in creating environmental problems and in developing effective responses to those problems. 

SOC 324 Food Justice

Investigates the institutional drivers and social experiences of inequities in the food system. Examines how the food justice movement responds by organizing for grassroots, community, and global, as well as cultural, economic, and political change. 

SOC 380A6 Climate Grief to Active Hope

In this course, we will discuss — from a variety of disciplinary perspectives — the complex relationship between individual experiences, structural conditions, communities of change, and reasons for active hope. In particular we will explore:

*The nature of global climate crises
*Individual experiences of climate and eco-grief and anxiety
*Individual practices like mindfulness & identifying your joy and role in building new systems
*Sociological imagination & the power of collective action
*The Anthropocene versus Capitalocene
*Political and Economic issues and opportunities for change
*Building more distributive and regenerative systems
*Active Hope
*Visioning more just futures

SOC 460 Society & Environment

Technology as a social phenomenon interacting with social organization and the natural environment.

SOC 461 Water Justice

Analyzes how human societies interact with and depend upon water with attention to institutions and inequalities. Examines various power dynamics of water access, control, rights, and management, and sustainable and just solutions to complex water problems.

SOC 463 Sociology of Disaster

Determinants and consequences of behavior and response to environmental extremes including floods, earthquakes, wind, severe storms, and technological emergencies.

SOC 562 Food Systems and Agriculture

“Food is necessary for human survival.” We hear this hackneyed axiom regularly. But what does this mean? In and of itself, it masks the social with an appeal to the biological and overlooks the ecological as an invisible prerequisite. In the spirit of unmasking the complexities of food systems this course delves into why food matters to society beyond the obvious need for sustenance. We investigate the economic, political, and social underpinnings of food and agricultural systems as well as ecological and non-human animal entanglements to better understand entrenched problems. Turn on the television or dive down a web portal and you are inundated with a barrage of information and lurking ideologies to sway your views. Debates rage over how to amply remunerate food chain workers, stave off the environmental degradation associated with industrial capitalist agriculture, use mechanical- and bio-technologies, solve global hunger and obesity, respect cultural foods and culinary traditions, reimagine gendered divisions of food labor, re-center the production of food within cities, and so on. In the mix are food social movements that navigate the complicated terrains of colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, institutional racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression as they struggle for different food futures. In brief, we foster a sociological imagination on the matrices of power that weave their way through and into food. Topically, food is noteworthy. Sociologically, food systems become an analytical framework for understanding the uneven relationship people have with this vital life source. Roll up your sleeves and dig in. You are about to cultivate new insights and tools to unpack the ongoing transformation of food and agricultural systems. Instructor- Joshua Sbicca

SOC 564 Environmental Justice

This graduate level course examines the unequal distributions of environmental risks, benefits, policies and regulatory practices across different populations. The course explores the meaning of social justice, environmental justice, environmental quality and environmental equity and examines the history of the environmental justice movement and evidence of environmental injustices. Processes of social control in response to environmental harms and policies that address environmental inequities are considered as well as political economic explanations of injustices.

SOC 668 Environmental Sociology

Connections between social organizations, the environment, and science and technology.

AND MORE COMING SOON!