The human & planetary health crisis requires new thinking and bold leadership. These courses explore health adaptations to the climate crisis, how public health and environmental justice are intertwined, and how health considerations can inform environmental action – preparing students for careers in global health, environmental science, policy, entrepreneurship, innovation, strategic communications, and activism.
A collaboration of the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health and Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Stanford Program for Disease Ecology, Health and the Environment
As the world faces unprecedented heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods, the effects of climate change and environmental degradation on human health are becoming the focus of much research and scholarship. As Stanford launches its new Doerr School of Sustainability, a growing number of courses explore the linkages between human & planetary health – engaging expertise from the School of Medicine and other partners across the university.
Learn more about human & planetary health courses below. For more information on human & planetary health at Stanford, explore the work led by the Center for Innovation in Global Health (CIGH) through its Human & Planetary Health focus area and the Woods Institute through its Healthy Planet, Healthy People initiative. For a full list of courses in global health and human & planetary health, explore CIGH course lists for undergraduates and graduate students.
*Anything missing? Please contact Erika Veidis: eveidis@stanford.edu
SUSTAIN 103: Human & Planetary Health (MED 103, PUBLPOL 183, SOC 103)
Two of humanity’s biggest challenges are strongly linked: advancing health equity and halting environmental degradation. The emerging field of planetary health recognizes these connections and promotes creative, interdisciplinary solutions that strive for both human health equity and the health of the ecosystems on which we depend.
BIO 179: The Science & Practice of Valuing Nature for a Better World (BIO 279, EARTHSYS 179, EARTHSYS 279)
This course explores the science of valuing nature, examining human dependence and impacts on Earth’s life-support systems along with concepts of well-being, human development, and conservation – and the ethics and effects of their pursuit.
ANTHRO 282: Medical Anthropology (ANTHRO 82, HUMBIO 176A)
Explore how health, illness, and healing are understood, experienced, and constructed in social, cultural, and historical contexts – with topics including: biopower and body politics, gender and reproductive technologies, illness experiences, medical diversity and social suffering, and the interface between medicine and science.
CEE 270: Movement and Fate of Organic Contaminants in Waters
Learn about the transport of chemical constituents in surface and groundwater, including advection, dispersion, sorption, interphase mass transfer, and transformation – and impacts on water quality. Emphasis is on physicochemical processes and the behavior of hazardous waste contaminants.
SUST 210: Pursuing Sustainability: Managing Complex Social Environmental Systems (ESS 230)
This course provides a systems framework for understanding and managing social-environmental systems, with the ultimate goal of inclusive, equitable, intra- and intergenerational human well-being.
EARTHSYS 194A: Environmental Justice Colloquium (HUMRTS 194A, URBANST 155A)
This colloquium brings the voices and vision of leading Environmental Justice (EJ) advocates to the Stanford community in order to educate, inspire, and transform our understanding of environmental science. Learn about ensuring equitable access to environmental benefits and preventing or mitigating the disproportionate impacts of environmental harms for all communities – with topics including: toxic exposures and health disparities, climate justice and youth action, Indigenous land and water rights, green cities and Afrofuturism, food justice and intersecting social movements, queer ecologies, and more.
STS 177: The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating: Technology, History, and Justice
This course will examine our everyday food practices as a site of politics where culture, technology, history, and issues of ethics and justice intersect. The topics covered include: the industrialization of agriculture; globalization and local foodways; food justice and ethics; new technologies in food practices (e.g., biotechnology, delivery apps); health and diet trends; and food and global challenges (e.g., climate change, COVID-19).
CEE 278A: Air Pollution Fundamentals
Examine the sources and health effects of gaseous and particulate air pollutants. Topics include: influence of meteorology on pollution, atmospheric diffusion equations, downwind dispersion of emissions from point and line sources, removal of air pollutants, mechanisms for ozone formation, and effects of airborne particle size and composition.
HRP 224: Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab (MED 224, PUBLPOL 224)
*Also offered winter
Design and develop innovative social ventures addressing key challenges in health and the environment in a course that combines design-thinking exercises, short lectures & case studies, workshops, small group teamwork, presentations, guest speakers, and faculty, practitioner and peer feedback.
CEE 277F: Advanced Field Methods in Water, Health and Development
*Also offered winter, spring, summer
Explore field methods for assessing household stored water quality, hand contamination, behaviors, and knowledge related to water, sanitation and health.
BIODS 228: Statistical genomics for planetary health: oceans, plants, microbes and humans
Data scientific analysis of genomics data has transformed biology, enabling myriad discoveries with enormous impacts on human and planetary health. This class will present the important open problems in the above application areas, pose them as statistical problems and explore core, unifying methods that are used to study them. It will investigate statistical and informatic methods that can be used to address these problems including generalized linear models, Pearson’s chi-square, permutation testing and present scientific examples/case studies where these tests fail to control the statistical level.
SUST 297: Introduction to Systems Transformation
*Also offered spring
This immersive course exposes students in the Sustainability Science and Practice coterminal master’s program to systems thinking and innovation approaches that are needed in order to bring about large-scale system transformation. Scaled and complex challenges embodied in the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are multi-stakeholder, multifactorial, inter-related, and systemic, and can only be addressed through innovations at the systems level.
HUMBIO 112G: Managing a fragile social-ecological system: Lessons from the Galapagos Islands
Using island systems as a microcosm to study and discuss sustainability, the course will motivate students to think deeper about the implications of sustainability in places that are isolated, fragile and vulnerable to all anthropogenic activities. A variety of island contexts will be considered but the class will give special attention to the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador. Students will explore past and present efforts to maintain the natural and cultural resources of the Galápagos Islands in the face of rapid growth in a tourism-based economy and ever-increasing globalization.
GSBGEN 367: Problem Solving for Social Change (EDUC 377G)
This course teaches skills and bodies of knowledge relevant to these roles, covering topics such as designing, implementing, scaling, and evaluating social strategies; systems thinking; decision making under risk; psychological biases that adversely affect people’s decisions; methods for influencing behavior; and pay-for-success programs. The large majority of the course will be devoted to students’ working in teams to apply these concepts and tools to an actual problem, with teams choosing whatever problem interests them.
BIODS 228: Statistical genomics for planetary health: oceans, plants, microbes and humans
Data scientific analysis of genomics data has transformed biology, enabling myriad discoveries with enormous impacts on human and planetary health. Algorithms and statistics are central to knowledge of human and plant genomic variation, to microbiomes and carbon cycling in the ocean. This class will present challenges and opportunities in using new methods that do not require a reference to illustrate how the planetary ecosystem can be investigated from a statistics-first perspective: from studies of microbial and plant life to humans.
ESS 14N: Sustainable Adaptation
will focus on people’s responses to a range of impacts related to global environmental change from sea level rise to extreme weather events. Example responses include changes in fishing practices, taking protective action during wildfires or hurricanes, and migrating to a new location.
LAW 2515: Environmental Justice
This course will introduce environmental justice as a social movement, including its central substantive concerns (the needs of humans in the built environment rather than the need to protect the environment from humans) and its methods (community-based political organizing rather than professionalized judicial or legislative action). The bulk of the course will then pursue a broader conception of environmental justice today by using social science research, theory, and case studies to investigate the civil rights and poverty aspects of environmental safety and natural resources.
SUST 297: Introduction to Systems Transformation
*Also offered winter, spring
This immersive course exposes students in the Sustainability Science and Practice coterminal master’s program to systems thinking and innovation approaches that are needed in order to bring about large-scale system transformation. Scaled and complex challenges embodied in the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals are multi-stakeholder, multifactorial, inter-related, and systemic, and can only be addressed through innovations at the systems level.
CEE 374W: Advanced Topics in Water, Health and Development
*Also offered winter, spring, summer
Advanced topics in water, health and development. Emphasis on low-and-middle-income countries.
SUSTAIN 329: Policy Practicum: Smoke (LAW 808D)
Solving for wildfire resilience is an enormous technical and regulatory challenge. In this course, students will learn the basics of the wildfire policy debate in the west with a focus on California. Lectures will focus on both scientific and legal aspects of the challenge.
HRP 224: Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab (MED 224, PUBLPOL 224)
*Also offered fall, spring
Design and develop innovative social ventures addressing key challenges in health and the environment in a course that combines design-thinking exercises, short lectures & case studies, workshops, small group teamwork, presentations, guest speakers, and faculty, practitioner and peer feedback.
SOMGEN 207: Theories of Change in Global Health (INTLPOL 291, PUBLPOL 291)
Organizations dedicated to improving global health deploy various approaches ranging from efforts to improve economic conditions, health systems, and technology to policy change and advocacy. This course critically evaluates 15 common theories of change that underlay global health interventions.
MED 246: Confronting Emotions in the Climate Sciences
Study a rapidly-growing body of scholarship and activism related to emotive and existential responses to climate change – exploring the psychosocial complexities that the Anthropocene proposes through key texts, films, and guest lectures that draw on climate psychology, philosophy, art, literature and history.
ESS 268: Empirical Methods in Sustainable Development (INTLPOL 272)
* Currently not offered
This course focuses on the determinants of human well-being over the short and long-run, including the role of environmental factors in shaping development outcomes. Students will focus on the empirical literature across both social and natural sciences, with discussion and assignments emphasizing empirical analysis of environment-development linkages, application of methods in causal inference, and data visualization.
HUMBIO 3B: Environmental and Health Policy Analysis
Explore connections among the life sciences, social sciences, climate science, public health, and public policy – including the economic, social, and institutional factors that underlie environmental degradation and challenges facing the health care system and public policies to address these problems.
CHPR 239: Contemplative Competence for Sustainability of Public and Planetary Health and Well-being
Effective engagement with the daunting complexity inherent in the climate crisis requires calm contemplative competence. Moreover, research indicates contemplative practices can sustain altruistic behaviors that enhance mutual flourishing of people and the planet. Through diverse learning experiences, students will develop the empathy, discernment, and wisdom necessary for initiating and implementing solutions to the climate crisis.
BIO 117: Biology and Global Change (EARTHSYS 111, EARTHSYS 217, ESS 111)
Learn about the biological causes and consequences of anthropogenic and natural changes in the atmosphere, oceans, and terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems, with topics including: glacial cycles and marine circulation, greenhouse gasses and climate change, tropical deforestation and species extinctions, and human population growth and resource use.
CEE 260C: Contaminant Hydrogeology and Reactive Transport (ESS 221)
Decades of industrial activity have released vast quantities of contaminants to groundwater, threatening water resources, ecosystems and human health. What processes control the fate and transport of contaminants in the subsurface? What remediation strategies are effective and what are the tradeoffs among them? How are these processes represented in models used for regulatory and decision-making purposes?
CEE 64: Air Pollution and Global Warming: History, Science, and Solutions (CEE 263D)
Learn about air pollution and global warming and their renewable energy solutions, focusing on the following topics: evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere, history of discovery of chemicals in the air, bases and particles in urban smog, visibility, indoor air pollution, acid rain, stratospheric and Antarctic ozone loss, the historic climate record, causes and effects of global warming, impacts of energy systems on pollution and climate, renewable energy solutions to air pollution and global warming.
BIOE 271: Frugal Science
In this course, participants will learn principles of frugal science to design scalable solutions for planetary-scale challenges with a cost versus performance rubric and explore creative means to break the accessibility barrier.
HUMBIO 166: Food and Society: Exploring Eating Behaviors in Social, Environmental, and Policy Context (CHPR 166)
*Currently not offered
Examine forces that affect the foods human beings eat, and when, where, and how we eat them, including human labor, agriculture, environmental sustainability, politics, animal rights/welfare, ethics, policy, culture, economics, business, law, trade, and ideology, and psychology.
SUSTAIN 2: Climate and Society
*Currently not offered
How and why is the climate changing? How might a changing climate affect human society? And what can we do to alter the course of climate change and adapt to any climatic changes that do occur? This course provides an introduction to the natural science and social science of climate change. The focus is on what science tells us about the causes, consequences, and solutions to climate change, as well as on how scientific progress is made on these issues.
EMED 134: Climate Change, Toxins, and Health: From Education to Action (EMED 234)
This weekly seminar aims to introduce medical trainees to a variety of climate change topics and advanced clinical considerations specific to climate change. Course content will cover climate and disease, sustainable medicine, advocacy and related social justice aspects.
ME 297: Forecasting for Innovators: Exponential Technologies, Tools and Social Transformation
First we invent our technologies – and then we use our technologies to reinvent ourselves, as individuals, as communities and ultimately, as a planetary society. The result has been a vast wave of astonishing innovations that in turn have generated the profound challenges facing humanity today. You will work with a suite of forecasting methods essential to cultivating innovator’s effective foresight, the ability to spot hidden trends, identify new opportunities, develop responsive innovations and anticipate unintended impacts in the face of exponential uncertainty. Our topical focus this quarter will be the Western US megadrought.
BIO 35: Sustainability and Civilization (HISTORY 35, POLISCI 35)
Our civilization faces multiple sustainability challenges. Climate change often dominates public conversation, but in fact, a whole range of environmental, economic, political, and cultural trends threaten the structures that sustain the societies we know. These problems cannot be understood in isolation, because they interact in complex ways. Solving them will require collaboration across many different fields, from the natural and social sciences to the humanities. This one-unit course brings together over two dozen faculty from across the entire university for a series of interdisciplinary conversations around cross-cutting themes. Our aim is to encourage dialogue¿and perhaps even future collaborations¿among students and professors who might otherwise rarely interact in a classroom. All students are welcome, but frosh and sophomores may find the course especially useful as an introduction to a wide range of sustainability-related disciplines and teachers at Stanford.
GLOBAL 112: Oceans and the Global Imaginary (GLOBAL 212, OCEANS 112, OCEANS 212)
This course brings together various social, climatic, and ecological perspectives to seek a better understanding of the relationships between people and the sea. Our oceans constitute some 70% of the surface area of our planet; they connect continents, countless islands, and form a universal link between geographically vast regions and culturally diverse peoples. Our oceans are critical to the health of our planet, and to humanity, and it is this interdependent relationship that forms the basis of this course.Taking a genuinely global viewpoint, we will explore the dynamic nature of peoples’ interactions with their maritime landscape and seascape. The course will draw on a wide range of social science and natural science data and approaches to assess how we traversed and explored the seas; how the seas have been an enduring source of nutrition; and how they have come to garner immense social and cultural significance to peoples around the world.
HUMBIO 112G: Parks and People on Islands: Lessons for Sustainability
Using island systems as a microcosm to study and discuss sustainability, the course will motivate students to think deeper about the implications of sustainability in places that are isolated, fragile and vulnerable to all anthropogenic activities. A variety of island contexts will be considered but the class will give special attention to the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador. Students will explore past and present efforts to maintain the natural and cultural resources of the Galápagos Islands in the face of rapid growth in a tourism-based economy and ever-increasing globalization. In individual or small-group course projects, students will search for tangible, realistic solutions to specific Galápagos problems in the effort to achieve balance between nature and a local human population.
BIO 71: Planet Ocean (ESS 71)
Oceans make up the majority of our planet’s area and living spaces and are fundamental to biodiversity, climate, food and commerce.This course covers integration of the oceanography and marine biology of diverse ocean habitats such as the deep sea, coral reefs, open ocean, temperate coasts, estuaries and polar seas. Lectures include state of the art knowledge as well as emerging technologies for future exploration. The second section focuses on how the oceans link to the global environment, and how ocean capacity helps determine human sustainability.
BIO 6N: Ocean Conservation: Pathways to Solutions
We will learn how to design pathways to solutions by integrating social sciences and governance into our case studies. We will address both conventional (fisheries management, reducing the impacts of global shipping, marine protected areas) and emerging research and management approaches (marine spatial planning, dynamic ocean management, environmental DNA). Oceans are facing long-term challenges, like overfishing and pollution that we know how to solve, and emerging challenges, like climate change and ocean plastics, for which solutions are more elusive. Ultimately to achieve long-term sustainability, solutions have to work for both people and the planet. These puzzles offer challenging complex systems problems that will require our best interdisciplinary thinking to solve.
SUSTAIN 121: Blue Foods for Indonesia: A Human & Planetary Health Action Lab (SUSTAIN 221,
LAW 809K)
*Also offered spring
This Blue Foods Action Lab is the first of a series to help Indonesia implement a far-reaching national program that could transform its food system and could be used as a model for other countries. The role of the students will be to evaluate successful programs implemented by other nations in the areas of aquaculture, small scale fisheries, blue food tech and justice and inclusion. We will examine current policies, existing datasets and impacts to fish stocks and nutrition. A report will be produced and shared with the Indonesian Ministry and our NGO partner.
CEE 272: Coastal Contaminants
Coastal pollution and its effects on ecosystems and human health. The sources, fate, and transport of human pathogens and nutrients. Background on coastal ecosystems and coastal transport phenomena including tides, waves, and cross shelf transport. Introduction to time series analysis with MATLAB.
CEE 265D: Water and Sanitation in Developing Countries
Economic, social, political, and technical aspects of sustainable water supply and sanitation service provision in developing countries. Service pricing, alternative institutional structures including privatization, and the role of consumer demand and community participation in the planning process. Environmental and public health considerations, and strategies for serving low-income households.
ESS 306: From Freshwater to Oceans to Land Systems: An Earth System Perspective to Global Challenges
Within this class we will have cover Earth System processes ranging from nutrient cycles to ocean circulation. We will also address global environmental challenges of the twenty-first century that include maintaining freshwater resources, land degradation, health of our oceans, and the balance between food production and environmental degradation. Weekly readings and problem sets on specific topics will be followed by presentations of Earth System Science faculty and an in-depth class discussion. ESS first year students have priority enrollment.
MED 242: Human Rights and Health
Weekly lectures on how human rights violations affect health. Topics include: regional conflict and health, the health status of refugees and internally displaced persons; child labor; trafficking in women and children; HIV/AIDS; torture; poverty, the environment and health; access to clean water; domestic violence and sexual assault; and international availability of drugs. Guest speakers from national and international NGOs including Doctors Without Borders; McMaster University Institute for Peace Studies; UC Berkeley Human Rights Center; Kiva.
CEE 41Q: Clean Water Now! Urban Water Conflicts
In this course, you will explore the technical, economic, institutional, social, policy, and legal aspects of urban water using these and more water conflicts as case studies. You will attend lectures, and participate in discussions, laboratory modules, and field work. In lectures, you will learn about the link between water and human and ecosystem health, drinking water and wastewater treatment methods, as well as policies and guidelines (local, national, and global from the World Health Organization) on water and wastewater, and the role of various stakeholders including institutions and the public, in the outcome of water conflicts.
CHPR 272: Geography of Health
This course will explore health through the lens of place. It will examine the relationship between health and disease outcomes and the socio-cultural and physical environment. More broadly, this course seeks to explore the questions: How does place affect one’s health? How can geographic location explain inequalities in disease prevalence and access to healthcare? How does geography affect public health and also clinical decision making for the individual?
HUMBIO 122H: Social and Environmental Determinants of Health (PEDS 150, PEDS 250)
This course will explore health through the lens of place. It will examine the relationship between health and disease outcomes and the socio-cultural and physical environment. More broadly, this course seeks to explore the questions: How does place affect one’s health? How can geographic location explain inequalities in disease prevalence and access to healthcare? How does geography affect public health and also clinical decision making for the individual?
SUSTAIN 232: Influencing Policy
In this course, students will learn how to influence active policy and legislative processes and bring their specific expertise to bear on these processes. The class will consist primarily of guest lectures and panels of experts from inside these processes as well as advocates who have successfully shifted policy outcomes. While the class will use domestic and international environmental policy as a primary lens through which to explore what effective advocacy looks like, this class is open to anyone interested in deepening their civic engagement or pursuing a long-term advocacy strategy of any kind.
CEE 277F: Advanced Field Methods in Water, Health and Development
*Also offered fall, spring, summer
Explore field methods for assessing household stored water quality, hand contamination, behaviors, and knowledge related to water, sanitation and health.
HRP 224: Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab (MED 224, PUBLPOL 224)
*Also offered fall, winter
Design and develop innovative social ventures addressing key challenges in health and the environment in a course that combines design-thinking exercises, short lectures & case studies, workshops, small group teamwork, presentations, guest speakers, and faculty, practitioner and peer feedback.
CEE 277F: Advanced Field Methods in Water, Health and Development
*Also offered fall, winter, summer
Explore field methods for assessing household stored water quality, hand contamination, behaviors, and knowledge related to water, sanitation and health.
HRP 285: Global Leaders and Innovators in Human and Planetary Health (MED 285)
Explore innovative ideas and strategies for addressing urgent challenges in human and planetary health through a diverse array of lenses, including: healthcare/medical innovation, environmental sustainability, foundations/venture capital, biotechnology/pharmaceuticals, social innovation/entrepreneurship, tech/media and artificial intelligence (AI), human rights, global poverty/development, sustainable agriculture/hunger/nutrition, public policy/systems change.
COLLEGE 106: Environmental Sustainability: Global Predicaments and Possible Solutions
The course will survey our planet’s greatest sustainability challenges, and some of the possible ways that humankind might overcome each. The course material will include introductory-level science, social science, and business studies material, and give students a basic understanding of the global biological, cultural, social, and economic processes involved in environmental sustainability.
MED 194: Global Health: Through an Equity Lens (MED 294)
Explore current topics of global health through an equity lens. Topics include decolonizing global health, climate and vulnerable populations, the poverty trap, inequities in reproductive rights, inequities for child health as well as global gender and racial disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
HUMBIO 114: Global Change and Emerging Infectious Disease (EARTHSYS 114, ESS 213, EARTHSYS 214)
Explore the changing epidemiological environment – and how human-induced environmental changes are altering the ecology of infectious disease transmission and promoting their re-emergence as a global public health threat. Case studies include malaria, cholera, hantavirus, plague, and HIV.
BIOE 394: Innovate for Planet Health: Entrepreneurial Opportunities for Planet and Societal Health Challenges
*Currently not offered
Learn about scientific and economic challenges and opportunities in innovating related to climate change and environmental/social determinants of health – engaging with speakers who are inspiring entrepreneurs and leaders addressing planetary and global health challenges through their work.
BIOE 375: Biodesign and Entrepreneurship for Societal Health (MED 236)
Addressing societal health and the environmental/social/economic determinants of health is a new frontier of entrepreneurship to improve global and public health at scale. In this hybrid seminar-based and experiential course, you will learn about the scientific and economic challenges and opportunities for innovating in these areas. You will also design solutions and ventures aimed at tackling specific societal health problems.
BIO 2N: Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease in a Changing World
*Currently not offered
This seminar will explore the ways in which anthropogenic change, climate change, habitat destruction, land use change, and species invasions affect the ecology and evolution of infectious diseases.
SUSTAIN 128: Systems Design for Health: Reimagining Stanford Campus Town Center (DESIGN 261)
Taking a systems approach to health includes the deliberate upstream design of the places we live, learn, work, and play to support living in ways that keep people well – physically, emotionally, financially, and socially. No place at Stanford has more influence on campus health than the campus town center (roughly including Tresidder and White Plaza, the bookstore and post office, and Canfield Court and Meyer Green). In this high-stakes live course, students will explore upstream systems that influence health, health equity, and sustainability on campus. You will reimagine elements of Stanford?s town center to promote health by integrating concepts from public health, systems thinking, and design justice and using tools from product and policy design. This course is designed as an intensive one-week sprint.
ME 375: Wildfire Science
While wildfires have been a natural part of our ecosystem, they can threaten livelihood and properties and impact the environment and health – and are increasing in frequency and intensity due to human factors. Learn about the science of wildland fires, with a specific focus on the physics and quantitative understanding of wildfire behavior, environmental impact, and fire management.
EARTHSYS 109: Rethinking Meat: An Introduction to Alternative Proteins (EARTHSYS 209, ESS 103, ESS 203, ETHICSOC 107)
How do we feed a growing population in the face of climate change? Learn about frontiers in food engineering, animal rights, human health, and sustainable agriculture – with a focus on the environmental, ethical, and economic drivers behind the market for meat replacements.
EARTHSYS 125: Shades of Green: Exploring and Expanding Environmental Justice in Practice (CSRE 125E, EARTHSYS 225, URBANST 125)
Historically, discussions of race, ethnicity, culture, and equity in the environment have been shaped by a limited view of the environmental justice movement, often centered on urban environmental threats and separated from other types of environmental and climate advocacy. This course will seek to expand on these discussions by exploring topics such as access to outdoor spaces, definitions of wilderness, inclusion in environmental organizations, gender and the outdoors, the influence of colonialism on ways of knowing, food justice and ethics, and the future of climate change policy. The course will also involve a community partnership project.
CEE 371C: SARS-CoV-2 in the Environment
This course will explore how research filled critical knowledge gaps related to environmental fate and transport of viruses allowed us to better understand the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and inform public health policies on masking and social distancing. We will also discuss the flow of scientific discoveries and knowledge from laboratory to the public during the pandemic and how typical outlets for dissemination of science were or were not effective during the crisis.
CEE 173: Urban Water
* Currently not offered
This course explores both quantitatively and qualitatively – technical, economic, institutional, social, policy, and legal aspects of urban water. The course will include lectures and discussions covering the following themes (1) history of urban water (2) journey of urban water including human health and ecosystem health impacts (3) sanitation (4) global urban water conflicts (5) disease prevention and pandemic response (6) practical and technical aspects of water quality analysis (7) economics of water (8) technology and water (9) seeds of hope.
SUSTAIN 331: Ethics in the Anthropocene (BIO 197, BIO 313)
Today, in the Anthropocene, humankind impacts the environment on a massive scale, with severe outcomes for species, ecosystems, and landscapes. The consequences of this impact raise many ethical questions, with new dilemmas forcing us to consider new moral values and re-consider old ones. In this course, you will become acquainted with environmental and conservation ethics and philosophy, and acquire the toolkit of concepts and ideas that will allow you to tackle the current environmental ethical debates. You will explore the role of ethics in the environmental and conservation sciences by discussing the philosophical foundations for moral values in the Anthropocene, as well as by examining practical current-day issues, such as reintroductions, invasive species and conservation advocacy.
CEE 175A: California Coast: Science, Policy, and Law (CEE 275A, EARTHSYS 175/275, LAW 2510)
This interdisciplinary course integrates the legal, scientific, and policy dimensions of how we characterize and manage resource use and allocation along the California coast. Our focus will be on the land-sea interface as we explore contemporary coastal land-use and marine resource decision-making, including coastal pollution, public health, ecosystem management; public access; private development; local community and state infrastructure; natural systems and significant threats; resource extraction; and conservation, mitigation and restoration. Students will learn the fundamental physics, chemistry, and biology of the coastal zone, tools for exploring data collected in the coastal ocean, and the institutional framework that shapes public and private decisions affecting coastal resources.
OCEANS 123H: Catalyzing Solutions for a Sustainable Ocean: Learning with Local Communities (BIO 123, OCEANS 223H)
The ocean is impacted by overfishing, plastic pollution, climate change and acidification, which are leading to the disruption of marine ecosystem functions and services critical for human wellbeing. Ocean mining, offshore wind farming, increasing shipping, land sea interactions and carbon sequestration are all posing a whole new set of unprecedented challenges and, at the same time, opportunities to solve the pressing problem humanity has to face.
EARTHSYS 139A: Designing Regenerative Societies (STS 139)
The course introduces empirically driven systems thinking with in-depth modules on both emerging tech and degrowth, and scenario-based tech foresight. We combine the tools of technology foresight, gaming, scenarios, speculative fiction, and worldbuilding, exploring and assessing utopian or dystopian trends, visions, and projects (e.g. the Eden project, biomanufacturing at scale, smart cities, the Metaverse, generation spaceships, space colonization, human longevity, mega-disruptive startups, global health governance, radical longtermism, and religious `heavens’). The goal of the course is to gain clarity on the innovation boundaries within which the next 50 years might develop. The course prepares students to become disruptors of governance principles, strategies, and leadership of corporations, philanthropies, economies, and civilizations.
SUSTAIN 222: Ethical and Effective Philanthropy for Sustainable Development (ETHICSOC 232T, POLISCI 236, POLISCI 236S)
Students will develop a pitch about why an organization should receive the donation and how they would evaluate the grant’s success, based on course readings and lectures on topics such as effective altruism, outcomes-based philanthropy, trust-based giving, and philanthropy from an environmental justice lens. We will also reflect on the appropriate role for private philanthropy and nonprofits versus business and government in solving social problems.
BIOE 256: Technology Assessment and Regulation of Medical Devices (MS&E 256)
Regulatory approval and reimbursement for new health technologies are critical success factors for product commercialization. This course explores the regulatory and payer environment in the U.S. and abroad, as well as common methods of health technology assessment. Students will learn frameworks to identify factors relevant to the adoption of new health technologies, and the management of those factors in the design and development phases of bringing a product to market through case studies, guest speakers from government (FDA) and industry, and a course project.
EARTHSYS 62: Building Alliances for Water Justice: Case Studies from California
What is water (in)justice? How have frontline communities come together to reveal inequities in water access and flows, advance meaningful reform, and build and sustain alliances? How do we center equity and repair in the face of drought and climate change? How do we learn to be good allies for water equity? This class will provide a nuanced examination of water injustice and justice by examining historical foundations, inequities in governance and distribution, and pathways toward restoration, repair, and water rights reform for justice.
EARTHSYS 160: Sustainable Cities (URBANST 164)
Community-engaged learning course that exposes students to sustainability concepts and urban planning as a tool for determining sustainable outcomes in the Bay Area. The focus will be on land use and transportation planning to housing and employment patterns, mobility, public health, and social equity. Topics will include government initiatives to counteract urban sprawl and promote smart growth and livability, political realities of organizing and building coalitions around sustainability goals, and increasing opportunities for low-income and communities of color to achieve sustainability outcomes. Students will participate in remote team-based projects in collaboration with Bay Area community partners.
ESS 234: Climate Displacement, Migration, and Mobility (HUMRTS 224)
addressing climate displacement is one of the central sustainability challenges facing current and future generations. The climate crisis is already driving people to move. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, approximately 31.8 million people around the world were displaced by floods, storms, fires, and other weather-related hazards in 2022 alone. Coastal communities in the U.S. and beyond are already in the process of planning relocation to escape erosion, rising sea levels, and other slow-onset effects of climate change. Displacement has significant economic, social, psychological, and cultural costs. In this one unit seminar, explore how to make sense of the human impacts of climate change on individuals, communities, and governments – and, in particular, on the ways in which the climate crisis is already forcing people to move or reconfigure their communities. Joined by a series of guest speakers who bring personal, policy, and scholarly expertise to this emerging issue, this seminar will speak to the phenomena of both internal and cross-border migration driven by climate change.
ESS 166: Will Technology Save the World?: Environmental Ethics and Techno-Optimism (ESS 266)
The environment is in crisis and we are the cause. In this class we examine our relationship to the environment, and our ethical obligations towards humans, non-human species, and the ecosystem more broadly. We will be doing this through the lens of technology, asking how novel eco-tech might help us solve the environmental crisis, including evaluating the risks, benefits, and ethics of proposed solutions like geo-engineering, genetic modification, and renewable energies. As part of this, we will consider who benefits from technological solutions, how we might need to change our relationship to nature, and whether societies are betting too much on the promise of future technologies to fix current environmental crises. The course will ground students in applied environmental ethics, teaching them how to apply ethical decision-making frameworks, including non-western ethical systems, with an emphasis on case studies and practical implementation.
EARTHSYS 56: Understanding and Imagining Sustainable Food Systems
What does resilient and sustainable agriculture look like? How do we provide people with enough nutritious food that they enjoy eating? What does a community-centered food system even look like – and what’s stopping us from creating it? This discussion-based course examines these questions, drawing on a variety of sources to give students an introduction to sustainable food and agriculture. Over the course of the quarter, students will explore what modern farming practices look like and begin to understand the forces that have shaped what and how we eat. This course will approach each topic with an imaginative lens, asking not only what methods and practices are currently in place, but also exploring what could be possible. Content includes indigenous farming practices and food sovereignty, rural and urban food landscapes, food insecurity and nutrition assistance programs, the Farm Bill, technology, and more.
PWR 91HK: Farmer, Scientist, Activist, Chef: Communicating for Food Security and Food Justice
How can you contribute to efforts to foster a healthy and equitable food system? In this project-based course, you will be matched with a Bay Area community partner working on sustainability or food justice. You will develop public-facing communications to support their mission. Multiple genres are possible: you might create a podcast, a policy brief, video explainer, or a social media campaign. During this process, you will develop a range of writing and oral communication skills. You will practice project management, collaborative group work, and expressing yourself through new genres.
SUSTAIN 212: Nature-Based Climate Solutions Policy Lab
Nature-based climate solutions can enhance the natural proclivity of landscapes and seascapes to combat climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while generating co-benefits such as biodiversity, cleaner air and water, and improved resilience in the face of destructive climate impacts. Yet “nature-based climate solutions” (NbS) are not well-defined and a general lack of understanding, experience and information-sharing about NbS is holding back their adoption. In addition, U.S. laws and policies can limit the deployment of NbS. In this policy lab we will work with a non-profit client that invests in a large number of NbS and is interested in identifying and overcoming barriers that are constraining their investments, and in improving how they measure, monitor and verify the climate and other benefits associated with NbS projects. Application required.
CEE 277F: Advanced Field Methods in Water, Health and Development
*Also offered fall, winter, spring
Explore field methods for assessing household stored water quality, hand contamination, behaviors, and knowledge related to water, sanitation and health.
SGSI 2023: Research with Impact: Developing Skills as a Community-Engaged Scholar
*Not for credit.
Join to learn from leading scholars about different approaches to community engaged scholarship and how you can develop a research agenda that addresses priorities and needs of the broader community. Each session will involve scholars from across campus, and by the end of the week participants will draft a brief research memo to guide their next steps. Open to graduate students.