Course Description

This course introduces and explores the implications of environmental issues worldwide.  It is designed for all students interested in the environment.  This course covers environmental issues from cultural, socioeconomic and political perspectives.  This course is also designed to prepare you for other advanced environmental studies courses.  This course requires regular readings from textbooks and newspapers, in-class discussions and regular writing assignments.    

Goals

• To create basic “ecological literacy”, an understanding of the relationship between human social systems and ecological systems
• To introduce the global implications of major environmental issues as well as the connections with our daily lives

Outcomes

• Students will be aware of and understand pressing contemporary environmental issues, including awareness of their political and societal context and connectedness. 
• Students will be able to articulate how environmental challenges relate to one another and to daily life, locally and globally.

Class Project

Students worked in small groups to design a "Waymarking" challenge on Chatham's Shadyside Campus.  "Waymarking" builds upon the concept of  geocaching by adding meaning to the locations, pinpointing a location with particular significance. (Geocaching is a scavenger-hunt type of outdoor activity using Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology to find location points and cached or stored prizes.) The students' waymarking challenge was to choose three locations on campus that are related in some way from an environmental standpoint, and use the GPS units to pinpoint each location.   Students demonstrated their waymarking challenge at Chatham's local celebration of national GIS Day, November 19, 2008. 

GIS Day Celebration at Chatham University

Professors, students, and GIS professionals from the Pittsburgh area showcased the research that they have conducted using GIS at Chatham University and other institutions.  The day featured  speakers from Chatham University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Pittsburgh and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, among others.  Chatham has incorporated ESRI’s ArcGIS into its curriculum since 2005, enabling students to access geographic data such as terrain, topography or survey data.  Graduate students in the Interior Architecture and Landscape Architecture utilize GIS within their classes, while the Landscape Architecture students utilized it to map the 32-acre Chatham University campus arboretum.

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