This course offers practice in writing various kinds of narrative. Assignments emphasize clarity, concision, and creativity. Exercises lead to longer work: sketches or short stories. Students hone critical as well as writing skills. Student assignments will be shared and discussed in class, along with selected works by published authors.

Earth's dynamic climate system is rapidly changing. This course will introduce you to the science behind climate change predictions as they apply to past, present, and future changes in our earth's climate. We will also discuss how, over the course of time, we adapted to these changing conditions with a specific focus on water resources and natural disasters, including floods, droughts, and hurricanes that have been predicted to intensify in response to ongoing climate change.

This seminar is for students who are completing an honors thesis. The primary purpose of this course is to provide students with constructive support during all stages of their research. In particular, this class will assist students with organizing the various components of their thesis work and help them meet departmental thesis deadlines.

This course offers practice in writing various kinds of narrative. Assignments emphasize clarity, concision, and creativity. Exercises lead to longer work: sketches or short stories. Students hone critical as well as writing skills. Student assignments will be shared and discussed in class, along with selected works by published authors.

This course covers mineralogical and chemical compositions, classification, genesis, and mode of occurrence of igneous and metamorphic rocks, including relationships between rock-forming processes and global plate tectonics; labs involve the study of representative rock suites in hand specimen and thin section, introduction to analytical techniques and in-depth coverage of mineral optics. One or more field trips required.

Explore how psychology, neuroscience, and medicine come together to study the etiology and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders. Students will examine the behavioral features and neurobiology behind various clinical disorders such as Autism, ADHD, Substance Use Disorders, Mood Disorders, Schizophrenia, Anxiety, and Neurodegenerative Diseases. The course will rely on primary research to identify how changes in physiology and biology might manifest in the behaviors that define psychopathology.

The demand for and the contamination of groundwater resources are major environmental concerns. To better understand the dynamics of the groundwater system, we will cover topics including the hydrologic cycle, surface and subsurface hydrology, groundwater resource evaluation, and groundwater geotechnical problems. Students are required to prepare weekly problem sets/labs, a term paper, and an oral presentation.

This course explores the evolution and interaction of life, rocks, oceans, and air during the past 4 billion years of earth history. Some topics covered are: ice ages and greenhouse atmospheres, continental drift, extinctions and radiations of flora and fauna, the early evolution of earth, absolute and relative dating of rocks, and the geologic time scale. Oral presentations and writing assignments focus on the design and testing of earth science hypotheses, critical analysis of recently published research on earth history, and proposal writing.