Future of Food part of Future of Food
The Future of Food is an introductory-level science course that emphasizes the challenges facing food systems in the 21st century, including issues of sustainability, resilience, and adaptive capacity, and the ...

Modeling Earth Systems part of Modeling Earth Systems
In this course, we develop the qualitative and quantitative tools for constructing, experimenting with, and interpreting dynamic models of different components of the Earth system. The integrated set of ten modules ...

Critical Zone Science part of Critical Zone Science
This course introduces and examines the Critical Zone (CZ), Earth's permeable layer that extends from the top of vegetation to the bottom of the fresh groundwater zone. It is a constantly evolving boundary ...

Water: Science and Society part of Water Science and Society
Water: Science and Society is a 10-module (12-week) general education course focused on the interrelationships between water and human activities from a science and policy standpoint. The course blends key readings ...

Water, Agriculture, and Sustainability part of Water, Agriculture, Sustainability
Water is the most critical substance for the sustenance of life, but the prognosis for the quality and supply of water resources in much of the world is somewhere between troubling and dire. This module provides a ...

Coastal Processes, Hazards and Society part of Coastal Processes, Hazards and Society
This blended and online course will provide students with a global perspective of coastal landscapes, the processes responsible for their formation, diversity, and change over time, as well as societal responses to ...

Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability part of Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability
This course will explore a variety of sustainable technologies with emphasis on understanding the fundamental scientific properties underlying each. Students will also examine appropriate applications of the ...

Heather Karsten: Using "The Future of Food" in 2016 part of Future of Food
This is a new introductory course on agriculture and food systems, the challenges and some potential strategies for sustainability. I co-taught the course with Steven Vanek and I was the instructor for three modules. This was my first experience teaching a "flipped class". Students were responsible for reading online, taking a weekly quiz online and submitting a formative assignment online before the class meeting. This format allowed us to review their quizzes and assessments and discuss material students had difficulty with, introduce themes of the second part of the module and the summative assessment, and for students to apply their understanding towards analyzing and interpreting data in a summative assignment.

Martha Richmond: Using Lead in the Environment in Government 438: Environmental Policy and Politics at Suffolk University part of Lead in the Environment
"Lead in the Environment" was a 3 week module used to introduce the larger topic of Environmental Policy and Politics. It was very successful in first showing students how and why environmental lead is today considered a "wicked" problem—a geologic issue that has impacts on environmental health, environmental justice, and challenges for environmental regulation and policy. Before looking at environmental lead, students often do not understand the scope and implications of present-day problems. Many students told me that they were surprised and saddened to learn about difficulties still encountered because of environmental lead.

Sandra Penny: Using Regulating Carbon Emissions in Energy and the Environment (SCI-105) at Bard College part of Regulating Carbon Emissions
We spent 4 weeks on this module at the conclusion of a 14-week semester in an introductory course called "Energy and the Environment." Inclusion of this module is my first attempt to reform the course into a more activity-based environment that recognizes that global warming is a topic of special importance to the students. The real strength of this unit is that it brings in economics and politics to the discussion of climate change. About half of my students were business and public policy majors, and they welcomed the opportunity to make connections between a topic about which they are deeply concerned – global warming – and the topics that they have already chosen for their major field of study.