Sustainability at UST
Curriculum
In 1992, the faculty approved a major in environmental studies. Dr. Steven Hoffman, Political Science Department, served as its founding director. More than 180 students have majored or minored in environmental studies since then. The major today ranks among our largest interdisciplinary programs. Its three objectives are: to transmit an understanding of environmental problems and their complexities; to motivate productive responses to those problems, both vocational and avocational, based on that understanding; and to foster the development of critical, inquiring minds.
We are witnessing and experiencing growing ground- and surface-water contamination, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, global warming and alteration of the world's oceans. The solutions to these fundamentally complex problems require the skills of multiple disciplines including geoscience, bioscience, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Building on the excellent faculty and strong tradition of environmental research in the sciences at UST, a new environmental science program (ESCI) was created to provide students with the rigorous scientific skills that they will need to help solve some of these problems. Dr. Tom Hickson, Geology Department, is the chair of this new, exciting department.
Sustainability across campus
Dr. Elise Amel, of the College of Arts and Sciences' Psychology Department and director of the Environmental Studies program, has done much to encourage incorporating sustainability into the curriculum. In the faculty development publication, Synergia, she outlined the issue as well as provided examples at UST where sustainability is already incorporated into the curriculum.
Dr. Amel notes that more than 30 faculty members from departments across campus have attended faculty development seminars on integrating sustainability into their courses. This means that between 30 and 100 courses during the 2007-08 academic year contained an environmental component.
"Greening" Your Office"
Instructors: Christie Manning & Elise Amel
Want your office to be more environmentally sustainable? This course will provide you with useful concepts to help create a workplace that uses resources wisely and creates less waste. Learn about the different key components of sustainability, and how to implement changes that will stick.Session Offerings:
September 25, '08: 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. TMH 401
April 2, '09: 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. TMH 401
