First Year: Thematic Curriculum

About BCEP

BCEP Students 2007

Courses move progressively through several topics-all concurrently addressing the same environmental theme. The curriculum's organization provides the context for the courses and enables students to examine one particular environmental area at a time in an integrated, comprehensive, and realistic manner.

Video: Matthew Guenther '10 on Thematic Curriculum

The environmental topics covered in the first year curriculum include:

  • air and atmosphere
  • water and fisheries
  • land, forest, and soil
  • biological diversity
  • energy
  • agriculture
  • urban systems
  • industrial ecology
  • risks to human health

Faculty from each of the core disciplines meet regularly to collaborate and plan integrated approaches to these themes. Faculty also collaborate on evaluating students' understanding of the interrelated aspects of a particular theme or assignment, and students' research projects and class presentations may count for credit in more than one class. For example, students may be asked to select an issue of interest from a text and give a class presentation that incorporates the economic, scientific, and legal considerations that shape current policies related to that issue.

The curriculum is designed to integrate:

  • Scientific foundations of environmental policy making
  • Ecosystem functions
  • Environmental systems analysis
  • Environmental economics
  • Natural resource economics
  • Law and regulations, enforcement and compliance mechanisms
  • Political processes and institutional arrangements
  • Human and ecosystem health
  • Ethical and moral dimensions of policy and environmental stewardship
  • Statistical analysis
  • Research methodology
  • Geographic information systems
  • Multimedia communication strategies