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Academics

Students engaged in sustainability coursework


Thanks to Smith’s open curriculum and breadth of classes, it’s easy for students to take sustainability focused and related courses, no matter their major. Students can pick a major with an environmental focus from several departments, select a unique minor, or join the environmental concentration. There are many opportunities to Get Involved beyond the classroom as well, through internships, jobs, research, and more.

Majors & Minors

Two Smith students stand in tall grass and take specimen samples

Environmental Science and Policy

The need for environmentally literate citizens and well-educated professionals able to address increasingly complex and global environmental issues has never been greater. Pollution, ecosystem degradation and unsustainable use of natural resources are just a few examples of how humans are altering the Earth and its atmosphere in unprecedented ways. Smith's Environmental Science and Policy (ES&P) Program seeks to produce future leaders in the environmental field.

Student in Michael Barresi's lab

Biological Sciences

Biological sciences treats the life sciences in all their breadth and diversity, including the study of molecules, cells, whole organisms, ecosystems, plants, animals and microorganisms. Students interested in sustainability can select the Biodiversity, Ecology and Conservation track.

 

Professor John Brady and students

Environmental Geosciences

Courses in geosciences at Smith highlight hands-on and discovery-based learning through modern field and laboratory techniques, as well as interactive student-faculty research experiences. Majors in the environmental geosciences track take a range of courses within the department, as well as chemistry, ecology and environmental science and policy. A degree in geosciences can lead to a variety of rewarding careers that address pressing issues, including climate change, energy and water resources, environmental stewardship and natural hazards.

Landscape Studies Banner Image

Landscape Studies

The Landscape Studies Program links faculty, students and courses in architecture, engineering, and environmental science and policy to study design, ecology, politics and human relationship to the environment. Smith's campus—which includes a botanic garden and an arboretum—and curriculum form a unique, rich archive and laboratory for the study of human interactions with the spaces and places we inhabit.

Graduating seniors in engineering 2021

Engineering

As an engineering major or minor students can take numerous courses and engage deeply in research on topics such as renewable energy, environmental engineering, hydrology, water quality and technology, and more.

 

Two Smith students stand in tall grass and take specimen samples

The Minor in Marine Science & Policy

The Marine Science and Policy (MS&P) minor permits students to pursue interests in coastal and oceanic systems through an integrated sequence of courses in the natural and social sciences. An introduction to marine sciences is obtained through completion of the two basis courses. Students then choose among upper-level courses that focus on or complement scientific investigation of the oceans and the policy aspects of ocean conservation, exploitation and management.


Environmental Concentration

Wind turbines over vast landscape

The Environmental Concentration gives students a way to organize a combination of intellectual and practical experiences, such as internships and service learning, around an environmental area of interest. A concentration allows for more flexibility than is possible within an academic minor, and students can pursue a concentration alongside a minor or a second major.

 


Sustainability Focused & Related Courses

Browse sustainability-related courses offered throughout the curriculum, including classes in anthropology, architecture, English language and literature, government and physics (please note the courses listed are meant to be a sample and some may not be offered every semester).

AMERICAN STUDIES 

  • AMS 201 Introduction to the Study of American Society and Culture
  • AMS 349 Symposium in American Studies: Culture and Catastrophe

ART

  • ART 389 Broad-Scale Design and planning studio
  • ART 380 Architect Design Studio: Terrest

ENGLISH LANGUAGE & LITERATURE

  • ENG 100 Nature's Nation?: American Literature of the Environment
  • ENG 222 Spirometers, Speculums and the Scales of Justice: Medicine and Law in 19th-Century African Diasporic 
  • ENG 363 Race and Environment

PHILOSOPHY 

  • PHI 221 Ethics and Society

SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE 

  • SPP 111  Beginning Portuguese
  • SPP 228  Indigenous Brazil: Past, Present and Future
  • SPN 230  Climate Voices
  • SPP 381 Seminar in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies: Brasil Profundo: Landscape and the environmental imaginary in Brazilian Culture

WOMEN’S STUDIES 

  • SWG 321 Marxist Feminism
  • SWG 230 Gender, Land and Food Movements

WORLD LITERATURES 

  • WLT 340  Problems in Literary Theory Narrating the Anthropocene

 

ANTHROPOLOGY 

  • ANT 224  Anthropos in the Anthropocene: Human-Environment Relations in a Time of Ecological Crisis 
  • ANT 229  Africa and the Environment
  • ANT 211. Forced Migration, Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid

ECONOMICS 

  • ECO 150  Introductory Microeconomics
  • ECO 224  Environmental Economics
  • ECO 250  Intermediate Microeconomics
  • ECO 311  The Economic Development of India
  • ECO 324  Economics of the environment and natural resources

GOVERNMENT

  • GOV 239  Social Justice Movements in Latin America
  • GOV 249  International Human Rights

LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES   

  • LAS 201  Colloquium in Latin American and Latino/a Studies: Climate and Conflict
  • LAS 201   Colloquium in Latin American and Latino/a Studies: Environmental Legacies and Ecological Futures of Latin America
  • LAS 301  Topics in Latin American and Latino/a Studies: Contesting Space: Art, Ecology and Activism

SOCIOLOGY

  • SOC 236  Beyond Borders: The New Global Political Economy
  • SOC 233  Sociology of Climate Change

BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES 

  • BIO 130  Biodiversity Ecology and Conservation 
  • BIO 131  Biodiversity Ecology and Conservation Laboratory
  • BIO (FYS) 196  Language of Love: Courtship Communication Across the Animal Kingdom 
  • BIO 207  Plant Physiology Laboratory
  • BIO 268  Marine Ecology
  • BIO 269  Marine Ecology Laboratory 
  • BIO 364  Plant Ecology
  • BIO 365 Plant Ecology Laboratory

CHEMISTRY

  • CHM 108  Environmental Chemistry
  • CHM 224  Chemistry IV: Introduction to Inorganic and Physical Chemistry
  • CHM 346  Environmental Analytical Chemistry

ENGINEERING 

  • EGR 100  Engineering for Everyone: Energy and the Environment laboratory
  • EGR 314  Seminar: Contaminants in Aquatic Systems
  • EGR 315  Seminar: Ecohydrology
  • EGR 390  Advanced Topics in Engineering: Environmental Engineering Systems and Processes
  • EGR 410D  Engineering Design and Professional Practice
  • EGR 422D  Design Clinic

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & POLICY

  • ENV  101  Sustainability and Social-Ecological Systems
  • ENV  201  Researching Environmental Problems
  • ENV  202  Researching Environmental Problems Laboratory
  • ENV  311  Interpreting and Communicating Environmental Information
  • ENV  312  Sustainable Solutions
  • ENV  230  Colloquium: Environment and Society in Contemporary China
  • ENV  323  Climate and Energy Policy
  • ENV  340   Climate Change: Making Social Change Happen A Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing

INTER/EXTRADEPARTMENTAL

  • IDP (ENX) 100  Environment and Sustainability: Notes from the Field
  • IDP 116  Design Thinking
  • IDP (ENX) 301  Sustainable Food

LANDSCAPE STUDIES

  • LSS 100  Landscape, Environment and Design
  • LSS 105  Introduction to Landscape Studies
  • LSS 110  Interpreting New England Landscape
  • LSS (FYS) 151  A River Runs Through Us 
  • LSS 230  Urban Landscapes
  • LSS 255  Art and Ecology
  • LSS 260  Visual Storytelling
  • LSS 389  Broad-Scale Design and Planning Studio

GEOSCIENCES

  • GEO 101  Introduction to Earth Processes and History
  • GEO 104  Global Climate Change: Exploring the Past, the Present and
  • Options for the Future
  • GEO 108  Oceanography: An Introduction to the Marine Environment     
  • GEO 150  Mapping our World: An Introduction to Geographic Information

PHYSICS 

  • PHY 118  Introductory Physics

STATISTICAL AND DATA SCIENCES

  • SDS 236  Data Journalism
  • SDS 192. Introduction to Data Science

 

For more detailed information on course offerings, search the Smith College Course Catalog.

COURSE SEARCH

 


Recent Sample Courses

IDP 316: Critical Design Thinking

In spring 2020, the IDP 316: Critical Design Thinking course tackled issues related to climate change. Inspired by the College’s Year on Climate Change Initiative, Instructor Emily Norton worked with the Center for the Environment (CEEDS) to identify meaningful projects for students to apply their design thinking knowledge and skills. While the course is always hands-on and collaborative with students working in teams on projects, the students also worked with CEEDS staff to develop their design solutions. Projects included investigating how to better communicate the college’s carbon neutrality efforts, storytelling around climate change and its impacts, creating better indoor environments for informal learning, and turning a maker-space zero waste.

PSY 240 Collquium: Health Promotion

During the fall 2020 semester, students in Professor Benita Jackson’s PSY 240 Colloquium: Health Promotion class drafted policy memos addressed to President McCartney that proposed sustainable initiatives to address environmental issues on campus. The students’ policy memos were informed by the annual UN Climate Change Report and psychology research on how emotion and motivation can effectively frame messages and promote behavior change. Jackson’s goal for the course was for students to have “broadened their idea of health promotion to include work to halt the climate crisis and appreciate how psychology—identity, motivation, emotion—is so central to this project that affects all life.”

Read more in this article by Amanda Chisolm ’21