
Courses
Spring 2023
The courses listed below fulfill requirements for the Sustainability Minor at UR. The minor in Sustainability includes two required courses and one course from each of the following groupings: Economic Sustainability, Environmental Sustainability, and Social Sustainability, plus an Acting for Positive Change Requirement.
The minor in Sustainability empowers students to shape a just and sustainable world through core concepts in systems thinking, justice, sustainability knowledge, integration, and acting for positive change. The sustainability curriculum follows the structure of the Triple Bottom Line Approach (Social/Equity, Economy, Environment/Nature) and includes consideration of the impacts of our actions, personally and collectively, on others, as well as a sense of self-efficacy to work toward improving conditions that foster well-being of people and the environment now and into the future. Inherent in the sustainability worldview is an understanding of definitions of sustainability and the complexity of sustainability challenges across cultures.
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SUST 101-01 Introduction to Sustainability, CRN: 21951, Instructor: David Salisbury (Required Minor Course)
This course provides a foundation for sustainability knowledge and problem solving. It explores the relationships between people and natural systems, examines pressing global challenges, and outlines leadership solutions to wicked challenges. Students gain deeper understanding of the most urgent concerns tied to living out of balance with the systems that sustain life.
WSTN 305, TU/THR 9:00am-10:15am -
SUST 101-02 Introduction to Sustainability, CRN: 21952, Instructor: David Salisbury (Required Minor Course)
This course provides a foundation for sustainability knowledge and problem solving. It explores the relationships between people and natural systems, examines pressing global challenges, and outlines leadership solutions to wicked challenges. Students gain deeper understanding of the most urgent concerns tied to living out of balance with the systems that sustain life.
FTNH G13, TU/THR 12:00pm-1:15pm -
SUST 345 Global Sustainability: Society, Economy, Nature, CRN: 22005, Instructor: David Salisbury (Required Minor Course)
Applies geography’s human-environment tradition to examine environmental, social, cultural, and economic dimensions of sustainability and sustainable development. Examinations into foundations and theories behind the concept of sustainable development, discussions and debates about its real-world applicability, and explorations into case studies addressing relationships and contradictions between human desires for material well-being, environmental protection, and maintenance of cultural and/or social traditions.
SUST 345 is a capstone class to be taken once all other requirements have been completed.
WSTN 306, M/W 10:30am-11:45am -
GEOG 250 Planet Earth: Wind, Water, Fire w/ Lab, CRN: 21057, Instructor: Stephanie Spera (Environmental Sustainability)
Basic concepts of earth systems science and physical geography. Includes earth-sun relationships, weather and climate, environmental hydrology, landforms and geomorphology, climate change, and human-environment interactions.
GEOG 250 is cross-listed with ENVR 250.
HUM 121, M/W 9:00am-10:15am
Includes two lab sections:
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GEOG 250-L01, Instructor: Stephanie Spera
REF 103, THR 9:00am-10:40am -
GEOG 250-L02, Instructor: Todd Lookingbill
REF 103, THR 1:30pm-4:10pm
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BIOL 199-04 Biodiversity Conservation w/ Lab, CRN: 20897, Instructor: Peter Smallwood (Environmental Sustainability)
Is the current six mass global extinction event a natural phenomenon or human induced? Biodiversity is the diversity of genes, species and ecosystems, and conserving these resources is a growing challenge with a myriad of threats ranging from increasing demands for natural resources to climate change. This course will explore the importance of biodiversity, how biodiversity of studied, and the ecological and evolutionary foundations of the science of conservation biology. We will study biodiversity and conservation in a local and global context, and consider the role of science in decision making.
BIOL 199-04 is cross-listed with ENVR 199-01.
GOTW A101, Lecture: M/W 10:30am-11:45am, Lab: W 1:30pm-4:20pm -
ENVR 201 Intro to Environmental Studies, CRN: 20233, Instructor: Peter Smallwood (Environmental Sustainability)
Overview of contemporary environmental issues, including species extinction, resource depletion, and pollution. Students examine behavior leading to environmental degradation, the scientific, ethical, and economic aspects of the resulting problems, and study policies intended to provide solutions.
GOTW A100, TU/THR 10:30am-11:45am -
GEOG 210 Planet Earth: People and Place, CRN: 20240, Instructor: Mary Finley-Brook (Social Sustainabilty)
Introduction to our earth as home to people and place through geographic approaches that analyze cultural, societal, economic, political, and environmental change. Topics include: human dimensions of climate change; sustainability; spatial analysis techniques and theories; population distributions and migration; cultural geographies; global economic development and its distribution; urbanization; political geography; and human-environment relations.
GEOG 210-01 is cross-listed with GS 210-01.
INTC 229, TU/THR 12:00pm-1:15pm -
GEOG 380 Eco-Feminism, CRN: 20806, Instructor: Mary-Finley Brook (Social Sustainability)
Ecofeminists oppose oppression in all forms and identify parallels between the harms from human domination over nature and those from discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, class, religion, or other forms of difference. Although an established field of study seasoned across decades, ecofeminism is newly gaining favor today with younger and more diverse advocates. To explore ecofeminism’s evolving and emerging geographies, students will pick a person or movement to examine in an investigative or creative project that they design. Students do not need prior environmental training, although esteem for planet Earth is a prerequisite. All genders are welcome.
INTC 342, M/W 1:30pm-2:45pm -
ENVR 269-01 Environmental Ethics, CRN: 21499, Instructor: H Bondurant (Social Sustainability)
Introduces students to the moral issues and ethical approaches that characterize interaction with our natural environment. Topics will vary but will typically include issues such as our moral obligation to nonhuman species and to future human generations, and ethical analysis of contemporary environmental issues such as climate change and species extinction.
FTNH G11 M/W 10:30am-11:45am -
ENVR 269-02 Environmental Ethics, CRN: 21500, Instructor: H Bondurant (Social Sustainability)
Introduces students to the moral issues and ethical approaches that characterize interaction with our natural environment. Topics will vary but will typically include issues such as our moral obligation to nonhuman species and to future human generations, and ethical analysis of contemporary environmental issues such as climate change and species extinction.
HUM 207, M/W 1:30pm-2:45pm -
ENVR 362 Environmental Law and Policy, CRN: 21303, Instructor: Chris Miller (Social Sustainability)
Examines legal aspects, both regulations and case law, of environmental policy. Central issues are whether legal responses (1) effectively address the needs of the parties most affected; (2) properly weigh such facts as economic efficiency, protection of nonhuman species, and the possibility of unintended consequences; and (3) are diluted by the political process.
WSTN 305, TU/THR 4:30pm-5:45pm -
HIST 399 Buying Stuff: History of Consumption, Thrift, Identity and Sustainability in the Modern World, Instructor: Carol Summers (Social Sustainability)
What sorts of gender, class, ethnic or national identities and meaningful lives do people build and signal by buying cloth, soap, tea, curry, or other consumables? Drawing on an energetic field of case studies, this course will examine how historians have approached the history of consumerism from the early modern era to the present—and how such histories offer insights not simply into the practices of the past, but dynamics of power, economics, and environmental consequences that shape our present. We will discuss a range of historical approaches, the types of evidence and arguments deployed, and the visions of change and possibility glimpsed through both consumerism, and its thrifty or sustainable opponents.
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ECON 234 Urban Economics, CRN: 21938, Instructor: Carlos Hurtado Martilletti (Economic Sustainability)
Introduction to the field of urban and regional economics. Study of urban growth and decline, the monocentric city model, and urban challenges. Application and interpretation of computer-generated statistical output.
BUS Q280, M/W 3:00pm-4:15pm -
MGMT 348 Environmental Management, CRN: 21031, Instructor: Olivia LaFont (Economic Sustainability)
Study of various challenges being faced by today’s organizations created by heightened concern for the protection of our natural environment. Topics studied include such issues as air and water pollution, waste management, and global warming.
BUS 114, M/W 1:30pm-2:45pm -
MKT 359 Sustainable Marketing, CRN: 22171, Instructor: Jeff Carlson (Economic Sustainability)
Description to come.
BUS 123, M/W 12:00pm-1:15pm