An introduction to processes and forces that form the surface and the interior of the Earth. Topics include, changes in climate, the history of life, as well as earth resources and their uses.

This course is designed to help students successfully complete their MES Capstone. A set of milestones will be set and regular meetings will be held in groups and individually to aid the student as they complete the research portion of their degree.We will be working together to complete a series of steps towards the final project. These steps fall into five major areas 1) Reviewing the literature; 2) Finding a model; 3) Framing your research; 4) managing data; and 5) Writing your results. Throughout the semester, we will also discuss career goals and the job search.

Sustainability presents both a challenge and an opportunity for society. Issues like climate change, pollution, resource depletion, and population imbalance are stressing the planet's capacity in ways that threaten our ability to sustain thriving and just societies. At the same time, these systemic problems are unfolding too slowly to prompt most of us to take serious and significant action, or to trigger meaningful responses from our political and business leaders. People equate sustainability with efficiency, waste minimization, and pollution prevention - all worthy goals - but at the current rate of consumption and growth these approaches alone will not create the future of abundance and equity that we desire. To quote author and MIT professor John Ehrenfeld, "Reducing unsustainability - although critical - will not create sustainability." What will it take to extricate us from the current predicament and forge a new path?


In this class, we will examine underlying psychological and cultural barriers to sustainability and discuss strategies for surmounting them. Students will learn leadership competencies and practices to help them more effectively lead change efforts for sustainability. Readings and discussions will explore the application of positive psychology to leverage the human technologies of creativity and collaboration in the pursuit of a more balanced and sustainable relationship with others and our ecosystems, and to shift the sustainability dialogue from the current problem-oriented approach to a vision of human wellbeing and planetary flourishing.

In order to make sensible decisions on products or projects, people need to understand the environmental impacts of these actions. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a process to assess environmental impacts throughout the different stages of a product or project's life. This seminar is intended to be comprehensive and covers material extraction, processing, manufacture, distribution, use and end of life reuse, recovery or disposal. The objective of conducting an LCA is to compare the full range of environmental impacts that emanate from the provision of these products or services and then use that information to improve the situation to minimize or eliminate harm. The focus of this class will be to understand the phases of an LCA as well as conduct LCAs that compare the impacts of two related options. This course will enable the student to conduct LCAs and examine the use of software that could be used in this regard.The classic examples are cloth vs. disposable diapers, paper vs. ceramic cups, and so on. This course will enable the student to conduct LCAs and examine the use of software that could be used in this regard.

Before the year 2000, "environmental management" for a business was typically driven by the need to respond to restrictions imposed by environmental regulation. But, at the dawn of the new millennium, leading businesses began to change their concept of environmental management to look beyond simply meeting governmental dictates. These organizations began to evolve and utilize "environmental strategy" to create new ways of growing their businesses by bringing sustainability to the core of their business strategies. This seismic shift in view was accompanied by a bottom line emphasis that, in some cases, turned sustainability efforts into profit centers. Sustainability increasingly is not hidden within the silo of environmental, health, and safety departments but has become much more seamlessly integrated into the operations of corporate functional disciplines.


Today, to effectively work in senior management, an executive needs to be knowledgeable not only about his or her specific business function but also how his or her business will be impacted by governmental regulations, policies, corporate sustainability initiatives, green marketing regulations, industry guidelines or 'best practices', new sustainable technologies, energy planning, environmental performance metrics, and required reporting on the environmental impact of their business unit.

Industrial Ecology is the multidisciplinary study of industrial systems and economic activities and their links to natural systems. The word "industrial" represents how humans use natural resources in the production of goods and services. "Ecology" refers to the concept that our industrial systems need to operate within sustainable natural ecosystems. The application of industrial ecology requires a movement of industrial processes from open loop business processes, where resource and capital investments move through the system to create products and waste, to a closed loop system where wastes (aka by-products) become inputs for new processes. This approach will allow to move to a circular economy. The implementation of industrial ecology, which aligns business operations with the natural cycle, creates the opportunity for a circular economy and has the potential for significant benefit for industry as well as for the long term viability of the human population and the natural ecosystem.

The aim of this course is to provide an incentive to use geochemical and mineralogical principles to address and solve major environmental problems. The students identify the problems that are associated with different types of waste. This course covers a wide range of problems associated with the waste arising from the generation of electricity. The main topics will be the uranium cycle, characterization of nuclear waste, and the containment and disposal of nuclear waste. Based on insights from the nuclear fuel cycle, solutions are presented that diminish the environmental impacts of coal and biomass combustion products, incineration of municipal solid waste, toxic waste due to refuse incineration, and landfills and landfill gases.

This course covers the fundamentals of atmosphere and ocean dynamics, and aims to put these in the context of climate change in the 21st century. large-scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation, the global energy balance, and the global energy balance, and the global hydrological cycle. We will introduce concepts of fluid dynamics and we will apply these to the vertical and horizontal motions in the atmosphere and ocean. Concepts covered include: hydrostatic law, buoyancy and convection, basic equations of fluid motions, Hadley and Ferrel cells in the atmosphere, thermohaline circulation, Sverdrup ocean flow, modes of climate variability (El-Nino, North Atlantic Oscillation, Southern Annular Mode). The course will incorporate student led discussions based on readings of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and recent literature on climate change. Aimed at undergraduate or graduate students who have no prior knowledge of meteorology or oceanography or training in fluid mechanics. Previous background in calculus and/or introductory physics is helpful. This is a general course which spans many subdisciplines (fluid mechanics, atmospheric science, oceanography, hydrology).

This course covers the fundamentals of atmosphere and ocean dynamics, and aims to put these in the context of climate change in the 21st century. large-scale atmospheric and oceanic circulation, the global energy balance, and the global energy balance, and the global hydrological cycle. We will introduce concepts of fluid dynamics and we will apply these to the vertical and horizontal motions in the atmosphere and ocean. Concepts covered include: hydrostatic law, buoyancy and convection, basic equations of fluid motions, Hadley and Ferrel cells in the atmosphere, thermohaline circulation, Sverdrup ocean flow, modes of climate variability (El-Nino, North Atlantic Oscillation, Southern Annular Mode). The course will incorporate student led discussions based on readings of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and recent literature on climate change. Aimed at undergraduate or graduate students who have no prior knowledge of meteorology or oceanography or training in fluid mechanics. Previous background in calculus and/or introductory physics is helpful. This is a general course which spans many subdisciplines (fluid mechanics, atmospheric science, oceanography, hydrology).