In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, crippling the city of New Orleans and ultimately killing 1,833 people. The scale of human suffering was widely covered by print and television media. This national tragedy focused attention on racial and class divides and the incompetency and neglect of government before, during, and after the storm. But, despite its impacts, Hurricane Katrina has slowly faded from our collective memory.
Independent reading course.
Fall and spring semesters. The Department.
(Offered as SOCI 342 and ENST 342) If you learn about the major trends shaping human societies and the rest of the planet in our era, you might ask these questions: How do we reduce the vast inequalities threatening democracy and undermining the self-determination of peoples around the world? How do we address global-scale crises like climate change, the pollution of the earth’s lands and waters, and anthropogenic extinction of species?
The effects of environmental problems, from climate change, to water contamination, to the depletion of fisheries, are felt acutely at the local level. But their underlying causes are often global: coal-burning power plants in China affects sea-level rise near Miami, overfishing by European fleets off the coast of Africa affects bush meat hunting in the Congo Basin, and deforestation in Indonesia creates forest fires that affect all of Southeast Asia’s air quality.
(Offered as STAT 111E and ENST 240) Introduction to Statistics provides a basic foundation in descriptive and inferential statistics, including constructing models from data. Students will learn to think critically about data, produce meaningful graphical and numerical summaries of data, apply basic probability models, and utilize statistical inference procedures using computational tools. Topics include basic descriptive and inferential statistics, visualization, study design, and multiple regression.
(Offered as BIOL 230 and ENST 210) A study of the relationships of plants and animals (including humans) to each other and to their environment. We'll start by considering the decisions an individual makes in its daily life concerning its use of resources, such as what to eat and where to live, and whether to defend such resources. We'll then move on to populations of individuals, and investigate species population growth, limits to population growth, and why some species are so successful as to become pests whereas others are on the road to extinction.
Food is a site of politics. Eating is a social and political practice with repercussions for the relationships between people and between humans and the natural environment. What we choose to eat, how we produce, process, market, sell, buy, consume, and discard food all involve political choices. The formal politics of government regulation and legislation affect food in many ways.
