2021-2022 Catalog 
    
    Nov 23, 2024  
2021-2022 Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Environmental Studies Major


Environmental Studies at Ohio Wesleyan is a broad, cross-disciplinary approach to the environment, encompassing the natural and social sciences, arts, and humanities within the context of the liberal arts. Environmental Studies at Ohio Wesleyan consists of nearly 50 courses taught by more than 20 faculty throughout the university. Program strengths include sustainability, food studies, and climate studies. Students interested in majoring in Environmental Studies are urged to meet with the Director of Environmental Studies at their earliest convenience.

Learning Objectives


• Students will be able to explain how a wide range of interdisciplinary factors (social sciences, natural sciences and humanities) contribute to environmental issues. They will also be able to explain how environmental factors connect to social and political concerns, including cultural conflicts, the built environment, ethical issues, human health, economic issues, poverty, and war.
• Students will develop skills in detecting and conceptualizing complex connections in real-world environmental issues based on their experiences with engaged projects. For example, the role of natural and social science perspectives, as well as humanities (such as ethics), methodologies, politics, and interpersonal relations. This implies a capacity to engage in real-world problem solving.
• Students will be able to connect global environmental concerns to local places and communities and address environmental problems in a global context and from diverse cultural and geographic perspectives.

Major Requirements


Core Requirements (2.25 units) for Environmental Studies major: 

  1. ENVS 100 1  Introduction to Environment and Sustainability
  2. ENVS 100 2/400 1  Conversations: Toward a Sustainable Future (0.25 units)
  3. ENVS 112  Ecology and the Human Future

Independent Project (1 unit): A significant project developed in consultation with the Director of Environmental Studies consisting of at least one unit of independent study (ENVS 490  or equivalent) or apprenticeship (ENVS 495  or equivalent). Project may be the outgrowth of travel learning courses, summer science research, theory into practice grant projects, internships, etc. Project will be refined and presented as part of ENVS 100 2/400 1  taken during the senior year.

One (1) natural science unit from:

  1. BIOL 122   Organisms and their Environment
  2. BOMI 103   Biology of Cultivated Plants
  3. BOMI 125   Introduction to Microbiology
  4. CHEM 230   Environmental Chemistry or CHEM 110   Introduction to Chemistry
  5. ENVS 111  Physical Geography
  6. GEOG 245  Weather and Climate

One (1) quantitative unit from:

  1. MATH 105 Basic Probability and Statistics  
  2. MATH 200 3 Biostatistics  
  3. MATH 230 Applied Statistics  
  4. PSYC 210 Quantitative Methods  

Two (2) social sciences units from:

  1. ECON 366 Environmental and Natural Resource Economics  
  2. GEOG 235 Energy Resources  
  3. GEOG 347 Human Impacts on the Environment  
  4. GEOG 360 Environmental Geography  
  5. NUTR 200 3 Food, Culture and Society  
  6. PG 362 International Organizations  
  7. PG 280 Environmental Politics and Policy  

Two (2) cultural / humanities / arts units from:

  1. ART 113 A Three Dimensional Design   (Bogdanov) 
  2. HIST 300 5 : Introduction to Environmental History
  3. HIST 350 C Topics: Black Death  
  4. PHIL 250 : Environmental Ethics

Six (6) units (no more than three from the same discipline):

  1. BIOL 255  (+lab): Tropical Biology
  2. BOMI 252  (+lab): Biodiversity of Flowering Plants
  3. BOMI 337  (+lab): Adaptive Biology of Plants
  4. BOMI 344  (+lab): Plant Communities and Ecosystems
  5. BOMI 355  (+lab, travel): Plant Responses to Global Change
  6. ECON 353 : Economic Development
  7. ECON 370 : Economic Systems
  8. ENVS 300 1: Sustainability Practicum
  9. ENVS 490 : Independent Study
  10. ENVS 491 : Directed Readings
  11. ENVS 400 2: Topics in Environment & Sustainability
  12. GEOG 353 : Cartography or GEOG 355: Geographic Information Systems
  13. GEOG 369 : Remote Sensing of the Environment
  14. GEOG 245 : Weather & Climate 
  15. MATH 200 2 : Mathematical Modeling of Climate Change
  16. MATH 280 : Differential Equations
  17. PG 356 : Public Administration or PG 355: American Public Policy
  18. PHIL 343 : Philosophy and Science
  19. PSYC 262 : Health Psychology
  20. SOAN 367 : Human Ecology
  21. ZOOL 311  : (+lab) Invertebrate Zoology
  22. ZOOL 313  : (+lab) Entomology
  23. ZOOL 341  : (+lab) Ornithology
  24. ZOOL 345 : (+lab) Marine Biology
  25. ZOOL 347 : (+lab) Population and Community Ecology
  26. ZOOL 349 : (+lab) Island Biology
  27. ZOOL 353  : Conservation Biology