Civic and Community Engagement
Expand your education beyond the classroom through engagement in socially meaningful public scholarship projects within your community.

Sustainability Leadership
Promote environmental, social, and economic sustainability in personal and professional lives through studying systems thinking, change agency, ethics, and more.

There are no certificates in this category.

Geographic Information Systems
Prepare to design, manage, and use geographic information technologies in a wide range of professional fields.

Homeland Security, Public Health Preparedness Option
Become a leader in the field of homeland security in public health preparedness.

Psychology
Emphasis is placed on research, teaching, and professional career development, with track options including social, developmental, and industrial/organizational psychology.

AYFCE211N: Foundations: Civic and Community Engagement
This course engages students in learning and practicing theories and habits of civic and community engagement and public scholarship, focusing on building democratic capacity and sustaining participatory democracy by examining the role of citizens in shared governance through interdisciplinary perspectives from demography, political science, sociology, and psychology.

CAS222N: Foundations: Civic and Community Engagement
This course engages students in learning and practicing theories and habits of civic and community engagement and public scholarship, focusing on building democratic capacity and sustaining participatory democracy by examining the role of citizens in shared governance through interdisciplinary perspectives from demography, political science, sociology, and psychology.

CED152: Community Development Concepts and Practice
This course introduces students to the principles and practices of sustainable community development by exploring the interconnections between economy, society, and environment, and equipping them with skills to analyze, collaborate, and influence development strategies through real-world case studies and team-based decision-making.

CED309: Land Use Dynamics
This course employs economic analysis to examine land use and land use policy, considering how the spatial configuration of landscapes evolves in response to changes in land prices, population growth, human preferences, environmental factors, markets, and institutions.

CED375: Community, Local Knowledge, and Democracy
This course explores the dynamics of community decision-making by examining citizen-expert interactions, participatory processes (e.g., in sustainable efforts), and methods for resolving complex public conflicts, with an emphasis on local democracy, ethical considerations, and the interplay of local and expert knowledge.

CED410: The Global Seminar
This course explores critical global sustainability and environmental issues through international collaboration, emphasizing trade-offs, policy, and diverse perspectives via case studies and virtual teamwork with students worldwide.

CED417: Power, Conflict, and Community Decision Making
This course examines how culture and institutions influence human behavior, interdependence, power dynamics, and conflict, providing students with analytical frameworks to understand collective action (e.g., for sustainable efforts), public choice, and community decision-making.

COMM 328: Effects of Science, Environmental, and Health Media
This course provides students with a conceptual and applied overview of the psychological effects of media representations of science, the environment, and health topics on different audiences.

COMM420: Research Methods in Advertising and Public Relations
This course introduces primary and secondary social science research methods and statistical techniques essential for solving advertising and public relations problems, emphasizing critical evaluation of research, ethical considerations, and the application of findings in dynamic marketing environments.

COMM473: Public Relations Campaigns
This capstone course engages students in developing a comprehensive public relations campaign plan through case studies, research, strategic planning, creative communication, and evaluation, culminating in a client presentation that applies real-world PR problem-solving skills and offers opportunities for sustainable applications.

EARTH/SCIED112: Climate Science for Educators
This introductory, multidisciplinary course prepares prospective K-6 teachers to understand Earth’s climate system through evidence-based scientific concepts and practices, emphasizing model development and applications for effective climate science teaching.

EARTH111N: Water: Science and Society
This course examines the scarcity and distribution of Earth’s freshwater, focusing on the scientific properties of water and the political, economic, and environmental conflicts over water resources and quality, with a particular emphasis on the Western U.S.

EDSGN452: Projects in Community Service Engineering
This course engages multidisciplinary student teams in real-world, community-centered humanitarian engineering projects, integrating design, ethics, and contextual awareness to support community goals while critically examining the societal impacts of engineering practice with opportunities to practice sustainable design.

EDSGN453: Design for Developing Communities
This seminar series prepares students to design sustainable, user-centered humanitarian engineering and social entrepreneurship ventures by emphasizing systems thinking, context-driven design, and integrated strategies for resource-constrained developing communities.

EDSGN454: Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship Field Experience
This course offers a hands-on, immersive field experience that enables students to advance humanitarian engineering and social entrepreneurship ventures through field testing, community engagement, and ethical decision-making in international contexts, with opportunities for sustainable design.

EME466: Energy and Sustainability in Society
Students in this course identify, organize, execute, and reflect on a local issue related to energy, the environment, or sustainability with particular emphasis on policy-based solutions.

ENGR451: Social Entrepreneurship
This course teaches students to develop sustainable business models and implementation strategies for social ventures that create positive social impact across diverse global regions, using case studies and multidisciplinary teamwork.

FOR201N: Global Change and Ecosystems
This course examines the diversity of Earth’s ecosystems and the human-driven global changes that affect them, including climate change, land use, and pollution, while exploring ecological and societal responses and strategies for sustainability.

FOR401: Urban Forest Management
This course explores the planning and management of trees and natural landscapes to support community development, focusing on arboriculture, urban forestry programs, land-use policy, and the role of natural resources in civic environmentalism and sustainable community planning.

GEOG123: Geography of Developing World
This course examines patterns of poverty in developing countries, exploring conventional and non-conventional explanations with a focus on solutions through case studies of specific regions.

GEOG124: Elements of Cultural Geography
This course examines how cultural processes and social identities, such as race and class, interact with geographic concepts like landscape and place, exploring human-environment relationships and issues related to plural societies, economic development, population growth, and settlement in non-Western contexts.

GEOG220: Perspectives on Human Geography
This course introduces the broad scope of contemporary human geography by exploring how cultural, economic, political, and environmental interactions shape geographic processes through diverse global and U.S.-based case studies.

GEOG230: Geographic Perspectives on Environment, Society, and Sustainability
This course explores the interconnectedness of social and ecological systems worldwide, employing an interdisciplinary geographic approach to critically examine environmental challenges (e.g., climate change, genetically modified food, overconsumption, disease, and environmental service provision), sustainability concepts, and human responsibilities for fostering equitable and sustainable futures.

GEOG2N: Apocalyptic Geographies: How can we prevent the end of the world?
This course examines diverse apocalyptic visions from the humanities and popular culture to critically analyze and connect them with contemporary global social, ecological, and economic challenges, fostering interdisciplinary thinking to imagine alternative futures.

GEOG30N: Geographic Perspectives on Sustainability and Human-Environment Systems
This course examines the intricate relationships between humans and the natural environment through geographic theories and methods, highlighting how social, economic, and ecological processes at both local and global scales influence sustainability, resource conservation, and responses to climate change.

GEOG333: Human Dimensions of Natural Hazards
This interdisciplinary course introduces natural hazards by examining the physical events and their social impacts, emphasizing how human vulnerability and risk shape the consequences of hazards while developing students’ communication skills.

GEOG40: World Regional Geography
This course explores global political, economic, social, and environmental changes by examining regional physical systems, cultures, economies, and challenges through geographic concepts like scale, place, and human-environment interaction to understand both global connections and regional differences.

GEOG430: Human Use of Environment
The major objective of this course is to help geographers, earth scientists, and other professionals to develop an awareness and appreciation of the multiple perspectives that can be brought to studies of human use of the environment and of how resource-management decisions are made in human society.

GEOG436: Ecology, Economy, and Society
This course explores the complex relationship between economic development and environmental sustainability by examining key concepts like equity, poverty, fairness and community empowerment, using case studies to analyze natural resource management and sustainable development at a macroeconomic level.

GEOG494: Research Project in Geography
This course provides an avenue for supervised student activities on research projects identified on an individual or small-group basis.

GEOSC402Y: Natural Disasters
This course will provide an in-depth, hands-on study of both the physical processes of natural hazards and the human systems designed to minimize their impact, their geography, and their impact on societies worldwide.

GLIS101N: Globalization
This interdisciplinary course introduces global studies by examining the impact of globalization on identity, society, technology, the environment, human rights, and conflict through diverse perspectives from the humanities and social sciences.

GLIS102N: Global Pathways
This course introduces five key global issues (conflict, health and environment, culture and identity, wealth and inequality, and human rights), exploring them through diverse humanistic and social scientific perspectives to prepare students to understand and engage with complex global challenges.

HIST109: Introduction to U.S. Environmental History
This course explores the major themes of U.S. Environmental History, examining changes in the American landscape, the development of ideas about nature in the United States, and the history of U.S. environmental activism.

HIST110: Nature and History
This course provides a comprehensive global historical overview of human-nature relationships, highlighting how environmental changes, resource utilization, and scientific concepts have shaped human history and continue to influence contemporary environmental challenges.

HIST453: American Environmental History
This course explores the history of Americans’ interactions with and perceptions of the environment since 1500.

HM384: Introduction to Meeting and Event Planning
This course provides an overview of the meeting and event industry, teaching students the essential skills and processes for planning, coordinating, and evaluating successful and sustainable events across various venues and industries.

HM485: Advanced Meeting and Event Planning
This hands-on course builds on event planning fundamentals by engaging students in all aspects of planning and executing meetings and events, emphasizing key business skills such as communication, budgeting, sustainability, risk management, and inclusivity for a career in hospitality event management.

METEO122: Atmospheric Environment: Growing in the Wind
This course examines the impact of atmospheric processes, including energy, temperature, moisture, pressure, and wind, on ecosystems, weather, and climate, with a focus on the role of solar energy distribution and human influences on atmospheric conditions.

PSYCH419: Psychology and a Sustainable World
This course examines psychological dimensions of humans’ connection to the natural world, causes of human contributions to environmental problems, and psychological approaches for encouraging sustainable behavior.

RPTM220: Sustainability, Society, and Well-Being
To develop students’ understanding of the concept of sustainability, this course explores how interconnected social, economic, and environmental systems have resulted in the contemporary sustainability challenges we face at multiple scales and in multiple contexts, from the local to the national to the global.

RPTM300Y: Tourism and Leisure Behavior
This course examines the motivations, impacts, and sustainability challenges of tourism from a global perspective, analyzing its sociocultural, economic, and ecological effects on both host communities and visitors, while emphasizing strategies for sustainable tourism development.

RPTM320: Recreation Resource Planning and Management
This course introduces the management and planning of outdoor recreation resources in the U.S., focusing on user behavior, agency roles, environmental impacts, and tools for sustainable recreation resource use and visitor experience.

RPTM330: Adventure-Based Program Leadership
This course will focus on the philosophy, leadership techniques, ethics, and current and sustainable practices in the area of adventure-based programming.

RPTM430: Environmental Education Methods and Materials
This course teaches methods and materials for developing, implementing, and evaluating environmental education programs in formal and non-formal settings, with practical experience at Shaver’s Creek and a focus on place-based pedagogy and access to resources.

SOC450: Justice and the Environment
This course considers notions of justice in relation to environmental philosophy, environmental movements, and general environmental concerns.

SOC5: Societal Problems
This course introduces students to the ways sociologists seek to understand social conditions, events, and behaviors that people consider “social problems” that require solutions (e.g., poverty, crime, inequality, violence, environmental change).

SOILS422: Natural Resources Conservation and Community Sustainability
This course provides practical knowledge of community and natural resource conservation by integrating the concepts of soil, water, air, plants, animals, and humans to develop sustainable land-use practices, effective management strategies, and a strong sense of place that enhances community and ecosystem health.

STS100: Science, Technology, and Culture
This course surveys the historical and cultural development of science, technology, and medicine worldwide, using humanities and social science perspectives to explore their societal impacts and evolving roles across time.

STS200: Critical Issues in Science, Technology, and Society
This course provides an overview of the interactions between science, technology, and society from the perspectives of the social sciences and humanities.

STS47: Wilderness, Technology, and Society
This course examines the impact of developments in science, literature, and art on changing attitudes toward nature, the consequences for conservation, preservation, and environmental ethics.

SUST150N: The Science of Sustainable Development
This course examines the interdependence of human society and the environment, exploring scientific principles and sustainable solutions to global challenges such as ecosystem conservation, the water-food-energy nexus, and urbanization, with the goal of promoting environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity.

SUST242N: Issues in Sustainability
This integrative course explores sustainability as both a humanistic and social issue by analyzing how political, cultural, and rhetorical forces shape environmental values, actions, and narratives through diverse texts, field research, and critical discourse.