Not available at this time

Not available at this time

Students hone skills necessary to write in the genres that STPEC majors encounter most often in the course of their academic and professional careers. Contact department for details.

Ecosystems are defined by the interactions among the plants, animals, microorganisms and abiotic, environmental features that affect them. This course will cover the flows of energy, carbon, and nutrients within ecosystems, tracing the key processes that define ecosystem function. Through the course, we will develop the connections between organisms, abiotic factors and ecosystem processes. This analysis will include a consideration of plot-level, regional and global scales. The effects of environmental change on ecosystem processes will be highlighted.

Students will gain a hands on, in depth experience of how to manage and implement an installation of a permaculture design.

This course discusses fundamental interactions between microbes, minerals, and organic matter responsible for carbon cycling, mineral weathering, and nutrient dynamics in soils. Through a combination of lectures and in-class discussions, we will examine the importance of these interactions for soil development, carbon storage, and fertility. Further, we will discuss the underlying mechanisms and suitable analytical methods for their investigation. Finally, we will examine how these mechanisms respond to global environmental change, and how this response in turn impacts soil functioning.

Biotechnology has experienced tremendous growth in last two decades and has transformed the areas of crop genetic engineering for food, fibers, biofuels and medicine. Plant tissue culture techniques facilitated the introduction of genes into plants for making crops resistant to herbicides, insects, production of edible vaccines, biofuels and healthy foods. Therefore, knowledge of plant tissue culture and transgene technology is highly desirable for preparing and training next generation scientists.

The ecology of major diseases related to food, from ergotism and the Salem Witch Trials to the Irish Potato famine to celiac disease and diabetes. How people, microbes and farming change our health and the environment. (Gen. Ed. BS).

In this hands-on class students will learn about permaculture basics while maintaining our on-campus permaculture demonstration gardens.