ENVT 101 - Environmental Challenges of the 21st Century

Units: 3 ; Breadth Area: GE-D1-2; Sustainability
Are earth and humanity at the turning point of Environmental Armageddon or Sustainability and Social Justice? A study of Anthropogenic impacts, environmental limits, societal implications, and possible alternatives.

Possible Instructional Methods: Entirely On-ground, or Entirely Online.
Grading: A-F or CR/NC (student choice).
Breadth Area(s) Satisfied: GE-D1-2 - Lower Division Social Sciences, Overlay - Sustainability
Course Typically Offered: Fall & Spring

Student Learning Outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

Describe the nature and magnitude of major human impacts on the global environment and how they affect its ability to support human and economic well-being.
Describe the multiple causes of dominant ecological impacts threatening human welfare, including the contributions of technology choices, population size, and behavior.
Explain how individual choices result in a tragedy of the commons, and strategies to avoid such outcomes.
Catalog a broad array of approaches to environmental problems solving; provide specific key examples for each approach.

D1-2. Lower-division Social Science Electives Learning Outcomes

specify how social, political, economic, and environmental systems and/or behavior are interwoven;
explain how humans individually and collectively relate to relevant sociocultural, political, economic, and/or environmental systems-how they produce, resist, and transform them;
discuss and debate issues from the course’s disciplinary perspective in a variety of cultural, historical, contemporary, and/or potential future contexts; and
explore principles, methodologies, value systems, and ethics employed in social scientific inquiry.

Sustainability Overlay Learning Outcomes

identify the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability, either in general or in relation to a specific problem;
analyze interactions between human activities and natural systems;
describe key threats to environmental sustainability; and
explain how individual and societal choices affect prospects for sustainability at the local, regional, and/or global levels.