An introduction to Earth as a complex system through examination of its atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and biosphere, the interactions among these spheres, and of the human impacts on the planet and its responses.

This course is designed to help you begin the MES Capstone process. You will be guided in the selection of a topic, development of a hypothesis, research methods, identification of readers, and schedule for completion. You will develop key tools to conduct your research including framing the research topic, developing methodologies to collect and analyze data, project management, and writing strategies. This is a seminar series course, which requires class participation and extensive writing. In class workshops will be included to allow you to discuss your work with your peers. Peer review is an important part of graduate work and the research process, and you are expected to participate fully in discussions and constructive feedback of your peers’ work. You are expected to attend class in person every week where there will be weekly lectures, assignments, and peer review. Your class participation and assignments will be graded in addition to your final proposal and poster presentation.

Many cities around the world, both large and small, have created climate action plans over the past few years. This course will outline aspects of the planning process including: decision factors for creating a plan, resourcing, outreach, communications, data and tracking, and execution. Students will leave the course with a clear understanding of how city level climate plans come together and are executed.

This course aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles and their significance in business practices. Students will explore the intersection of sustainability and financial performance. The course will examine the frameworks, metrics, and strategies used to assess and integrate ESG factors into business strategies. Additionally, students will analyze case studies, engage in discussions, and develop practical skills to navigate the evolving landscape of responsible business conduct.

After four generations of explosive global trade growth, a growing awareness of climate change and other environmental externalities has triggered a global movement toward decarbonization, localization and re-shoring. ESG pressure from investors as well as carbon-related taxes, incentives and reporting requirements are driving operations and supply management to go green. However, lowering the carbon profile of global supply chains is a massive undertaking. This class teaches a proven sequence of management decision-making frameworks and optimization tools for eliminating carbon throughout the supply chain. Students will apply logistical and supply management models that integrate carbon objectives with cost, service level, and other conventional supply chain management objectives, making the course valuable for supply chain professionals and students alike. The combination of academic constructs and real-life case studies is designed to equip students to successfully lead their companies’ decarbonization programs. It also prepares students to take the optional REVchain™ supply chain decarbonization certificate exam.

Environmental Justice (EJ) mapping examines the intersection of environmental burdens and the vulnerable communities disproportionately impacted by their harm. From redlining to the static maps that first showed the correlation between race and waste, and moving through to today's truly dynamic EJ mapping tools, The Principles of Mapping for Environmental Justice explores how mapping quite literally put EJ on the environmental movement landscape. This is not a GIS course, nor a course on EJ generally, but an examination into the core components that are inherent to EJ mapping principles. Come explore the indicators and methodologies used by federal, state and local governments and the policy they influence, such as President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative.

Conservationists were long accused of ignoring the needs of human communities. often been thought of as protecting land from people. Now, the conservation movement is embracing a different viewprotecting land with and for people. As a result innovative programs have been developed that connect people to nature, thereby helping to facilitate land conservation. This interdisciplinary course will integrate concepts in scientific method, study design, ecology, and conservation with a focus on birds in order to foster an understanding of how research can inform management of wildlife populations and communities. Topics will include wildlife management, habitat restoration, geographical information systems (GIS), sustainable agriculture, integrated land-use management, and vegetation analysis. This course will also provide opportunities for field research and application of techniques learned in the classroom.

The growing field of climate technology requires a multifaceted skill set anchored in a sound understanding of finance and policy. This course is designed for students interested in the climate economy seeking to gain functional proficiency in climate finance and policy. The course will cover four key areas of the climate economy from a finance and policy angle: electrification, carbon management, critical minerals & materials, and breakthrough technologies. The finance portion of the course will deliver a basic understanding of the financial reporting of companies within the given subsector, functionality of the relevant technologies, capital structure of relevant companies, and general business model of relevant companies. The policy portion of the course will deliver a basic understanding of the salient policies and issues facing companies in the aforementioned subsectors as well as sector wide headwinds and tailwinds catalyzed by policy. Throughout the course, students will build a financial model, business plan, and present their end deliverable in a shark tank format at the end of the course with observers drawn from the field to provide networking opportunities.

From Wall Street to rural Sub-Saharan Africa, technology innovation to aging infrastructure-this course will explore the; impact of water and consider what future leaders need to know about the dynamics of the industry, investment and business opportunities, and water-related risk; Opportunities for water are booming around the world, in large part because of existing or looming shortages and decades of underinvestment, population growth, rapid industrialization and urbanization, pollution, and climate change. Water is the only irreplaceable natural resource on the planet. Its critical role in every aspect of the global economy, could, in fact, lead it to be the next gold or the next oil; This course will address the fundamentals of the water sector from an international perspective. The future of water will be critical to our global economic, social and political development and will likely become one of the most influential factors in business decisions for the future. Furthermore, it is essential for leaders across all sectors-from pharmaceuticals to financials, energy to agriculture-to understand how to sustainably manage and account for water resources, capitalize on new technologies, mitigate water-related risks and navigate through complex and dynamic policy and regulation. The course will engage students in high-level discussion and strategy formation, challenging them to develop creative and sustainable solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing environmental, business and water industry leaders today. Interactive sessions and projects will provide an introduction to appropriately managing, valuing and investing in water assets to create sustainable and compelling business opportunities.

With the advent of big data and AI, data has become a critical driver in decision making across organizations and domains. Data is used extensively to solve problems in sustainability including risk assessment, trend analysis, environmental modeling, and program management. Data is also a core component of interdisciplinary research that studies relationships between the environment, economics, demographics, public health, etc. In order to tackle these problems, professionals have been under increasing expectations to possess the skills to interpret, communicate, analyze, and process data. The importance of data has necessitated that professionals not only be familiar with data technology, but be able to approach problem solving with the sufficient rigor needed to produce accurate results and conclusions.
This course will introduce the fundamentals of data analysis and computer programming. This course is suitable for students with no prior coding experience and will serve as a comprehensive overview of Python basics. Data visualization and interpretation will be taught using Excel. The course will also demonstrate how data analysis is applied in industry using SQL and Power BI Desktop. Advanced statistics and machine learning will not be covered in this course, but students are encouraged to explore those topics in future classes.