Environmental Studies

The course examines regional climates and anomalies with particular emphasis on the temperate and tropical regions. Topics include evapotranspiration, water balance concepts and Koeppen‘s classification system, general circulation, mid-latitude climates, tropical climates, and inter-tropical discontinuity (ITD) and weather zones of Ghana and West Africa.

This course develops an understanding of key concepts and theories related to climate issues, sustainability, and environmental governance in Africa. It debates climate adaptation and mitigation, sustainable development, and governing the environment, and discusses specific African cases related to climate-smart interventions, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and governance initiatives related to biodiversity conservation and rural development. The course examines key actors in Africa's development and the roles they play in responding to the climate crisis, in sustainability, and in governing natural resources. It discusses relevant questions concerning the relationship between climate, scarcity, and abundance; internationally-driven, climate-smart initiatives in Africa related to the role of state, market, and civil society; and the impacts and coping strategies related to implementing the SDGs in Africa. The course consists of a combination of lectures and workshop-like activities with active student participation and presentations by a number of external lecturers, including guests from the private sector, NGOs, and researchers. This version of the course is worth 6 quarter UC units and assessment consists of a written paper on a topic of the student's own choosing comprising 24,000-28,800 characters.

This course explores the processes and patterns of climate variability and change, and considers how these aspects of climate impact society. The course emphasizes the concept that climate is not only a determinant of human activities but is one of humankind's greatest resources. The course also examines how it can be one of humankind's greatest threats, due to the occurrence of climate extremes and anthropogenic-related changes to the global climate system. The course explores the relationship between climate and society; climate oscillations and teleconnections as well as the mechanisms underlying climatic variability; the nature of direct and indirect impacts of climate on society and the science of climate change and how climate change impact assessments are conducted; climate risk and its assessment; how climate knowledge can be applied to the problem of sustainable development.

The extensive independent study field research paper produced by the student is both the centerpiece of the intern's professional engagement and the culmination of the academic achievements of the semester. During the preparatory session, IFE teaches the methodological guidelines and principles to which students are expected to adhere in the development of their written research. Students work individually with a research advisor from their field. The first task is to identify a topic, following guidelines established by IFE for research topic choice. The subject must be tied in a useful and complementary way to the student-intern's responsibilities, as well as to the core concerns of the host organization. The research question should be designed to draw as much as possible on resources available to the intern via the internship (data, documents, interviews, observations, seminars and the like). Students begin to focus on this project after the first 2-3 weeks on the internship. Each internship agreement signed with an organization makes explicit mention of this program requirement, and this is the culminating element of their semester. Once the topic is identified, students meet individually, as regularly as they wish, with their IFE research advisor to generate a research question from the topic, develop an outline, identify sources and research methods, and discuss drafts submitted by the student. The research advisor also helps students prepare for the oral defense of their work which takes place a month before the end of the program and the due date of the paper. The purpose of this exercise is to help students evaluate their progress and diagnose the weak points in their outline and arguments. Rather than an extraneous burden added to the intern's other duties, the field research project grows out of the internship through a useful and rewarding synergy of internship and research. The Field Study and Internship model results in well-trained student-interns fully engaged in mission-driven internships in their field, while exploring a critical problem guided by an experienced research advisor.

The history of climate and environment are rapidly evolving fields of study that aim to reconstruct environmental and climate conditions over past centuries and millennia, and to understand how societies perceived and responded to changing environmental conditions and events such as natural disasters and extreme weather. These aims can be best achieved by combining evidence from both natural and human archives. In this course, students examine how natural archives such as tree-rings and sediment cores can be used to reveal climate and environmental variations in the past. They examine how this information can be combined with evidence from human archives, including written and archaeological records, to understand the social impacts of environmental change. In doing so, they draw upon case studies from the ancient, medieval, and early modern eras. The case studies range from ancient Egypt and Babylonia to the ancient American Southwest, and from there to Medieval Ireland, and into the oceanic realm. In these places students examine the role of pre-modern societies in transforming the face of the earth, and how humans perceived and coped with a changing environment.

This course consists of two parts: 1) experimental design and 2) data analysis. The experimental design part of the course largely follows a textbook (Ruxton and Colegrave 2016). The main theme of the data analysis part is the method of maximum likelihood although other approaches are also discussed. Computer simulations will be used to understand the concepts of various statistical methods, but no prior experience in programming is required. Although the course title contains the word ecology, this is a general course on experimental design and data analysis. Students of any fields (social science, political science, physical science, biological science, business, engineering, etc.) can take the course. No knowledge of ecology is required. On the other hand, students are expected to have the basic knowledge of statistics (e.g., one semester of an introductory statistics course).