During an era when the world is facing a wide range of environmental problems that are in the news virtually every day, environmental studies has become a particularly timely and important discipline. The environmental studies program provides an opportunity for the systematic investigation of the natural world and the interaction of humans with their own environment. Environmental issues and conflicts of this century are highly complex and transcend traditional academic disciplines.The goal of the environmental studies program at UC is to provide the interdisciplinary training and conceptual framework required to analyze and respond to the complex and dynamic environmental problems of the modern world.
The solutions to environmental issues and conflicts will continue to require expertise from the natural and social sciences such as biology, economics, engineering and political sciences, but the real-world solutions will also require a more interdisciplinary perspective. They require professionals who take a systems approach: an approach that addresses the complex interrelationships within and among components of natural, built and social environments.
The goal of our environmental studies curriculum is to produce professionals with a strong foundation in the key sciences who also "speak the languages" of the multiple disciplines involved in environmental problem solving and who have learned to interact in interdisciplinary teams. The curriculum includes courses that examine the biological environment (e.g., biology and ecology), the physical environment (e.g., chemistry, geology and geography) and the social-human environment (e.g., policy, ethics and economics). The curriculum also emphasizes the acquisition of "tools of the trade," such as field and lab skills, data analysis, the identification of plants and animals, and computer-based approaches such as satellite remote sensing and geographic information systems.