Biomass conversion into highly useful chemicals
This is CURE based course that aims at bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge in chemistry and its practical applications at solving real-world problems. It gives students an opportunity to construct and synthesize their knowledge and skills by learning to apply theoretical knowledge to practice by the laboratory research. The purpose of this course is to acquaint students with the fundamental concepts of chemistry, synthetic methods and techniques. The emphasis will be on novel catalysts synthesis and evaluating their activity towards biomass conversion to liquid fuel and useful chemicals. Students will design synthesize, deduce identities of the biomass conversion products from chemical and spectral clues, and predict reaction products.

6. Energy from and to the Earth
This module compares the spatial availability of geothermal resources for heating and cooling and evaluates different ground exchange systems for practical application. The operation of enhanced geothermal systems ...

8. Efficiency and Conservation
Household energy use accounts for a significant portion of the nation's energy use; therefore, an important aspect of energy conservation is having buildings that are energy efficient. In this activity, ...

5. Passive Designs
In this module, we consider how the actual design and placement of buildings can be important considerations for energy efficiency, thereby optimizing winter heating and summer cooling needs. One of the simplest ...

9. Hybrid and Electric Cars
This module reviews the history of the automobile and its varied power sources, culminating in the latest versions of hybrid and electric cars.

4. Creating Electricity from Light
This module introduces students to the various ways electricity is made from solar radiation. It provides a historical approach following advances over the last two centuries. Students see these technologies in ...

7. Better Ways to Illuminate
In this module, students compare three types of lamps that are used for lighting: incandescent, compact fluorescent (CFL) and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Students collect data on the amount of heat and light ...

Justice, Power, and Activism: What the Goldman Environmental Prize Winners Teach Us About Resilience and Democracy
This activity is a set of student-centered exercises that enable students to learn about the individual stories of Goldman environmental prize winners, the activism and organizing that grounds their work, and the underlying political and social contexts from which their struggles emerge. The lesson inspires critical reflection about justice, power, and democracy in green politics, and encourages ways to make personal connections to activism and environmental work.

Unit 6: Carbon Emissions Game
In this unit, students play a game, a variation on the "Pollution Game" (Corrigan 2011), to develop an appreciation of the pros and cons of the commonly discussed policy options for carbon abatement ...

Unit 3: Dynamic Integrated Climate Economy (DICE) Modeling
After an opening discussion of systems thinking and models, student use webDICE , an online Dynamic Integrated Climate Economy model developed by Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy at ...

Unit 7: Climate Change from the Socio-Environmental Systems Perspective
This unit summarizes and synthesizes the previous six units by inviting students to reflect on their experiences throughout the module, identify key learning moments and consider how these events influenced their ...

1. Electricity, Work, and Power
This module is designed to prepare students to better understand the other modules in the course. It is a review of basic high school-level physics, reminding students of the fundamentals of energy, work, power, ...

2. Using Wind to do Work
This module shows students how wind (atmospheric circulation) is produced from solar radiation, gravity, and the spinning of Earth. It then develops the history of how humans have harnessed the power of the wind, ...

3. Thermal Energy from Light
In this module, students learn the basic principles and techniques involved with converting solar radiation to useful heat. They explore the concepts of temperature and heat, and the physical basis for solar ...

Unit 4: Fossil Fuel Formation
Students will explore various aspects of fossil fuels by examining the various ranks of coal and the processes by which coal, oil, and natural gas form.

Unit 2: The Carbon Cycle
Students will explore the different aspects of the carbon cycle on Earth. This includes the original source of all the carbon on our planet, the near ubiquity of carbon, the six principle reservoirs of carbon in ...

Unit 5: Modern CO2 Accumulation
Students will examine data that record the modern increase in carbon dioxide concentrations and the associated increase in average temperatures, and they will investigate the effects of carbon dioxide on various ...

Unit 3: Geologic Record of Past Climate
Students will be introduced to a few of the different methods used in paleoclimatology, including isotopic ratios as paleotemperature proxies. They will investigate the greenhouse gas connections of two ancient ...

Capstone Project
For those teaching the modules as an entire course, we provide a capstone summary assessment activity. This activity is designed to incorporate scaffolding of the material, to use the gained knowledge to do ...

10. Energy from Biofuels
This unit explores the historic, current, and potential use of biomass for the production of energy. Various bio fuels are introduced, and students are reminded of the role of biomass in the development of ...