This course builds on foundational ecological principles (organism, population, community, ecosystem) to engage students with real-world sustainability challenges, emphasizing how humans use and manage resources at local and global scales. It applies key ecological concepts to critical environmental issues, including population growth, climate change, water resources, and energy.

This course builds on foundational ecological principles (organism, population, community, ecosystem) to engage students with real-world sustainability challenges, emphasizing how humans use and manage resources at local and global scales. It applies key ecological concepts to critical environmental issues, including population growth, climate change, water resources, and energy.

This course builds on foundational ecological principles (organism, population, community, ecosystem) to engage students with real-world sustainability challenges, emphasizing how humans use and manage resources at local and global scales. It applies key ecological concepts to critical environmental issues, including population growth, climate change, water resources, and energy.

Builds on lecture (Ecological Basis of Environmental Issues) themes and gives students a chance to investigate natural systems and explore ways human activities affect the environment. Students practice working with and interpreting environmental data and communicating their findings throughout the semester. Students will also put these ideas into practice by making an ecologically-based change in their lifestyle and quantifying its impact on environmental sustainability.

Builds on lecture (Ecological Basis of Environmental Issues) themes and gives students a chance to investigate natural systems and explore ways human activities affect the environment. Students practice working with and interpreting environmental data and communicating their findings throughout the semester. Students will also put these ideas into practice by making an ecologically-based change in their lifestyle and quantifying its impact on environmental sustainability.

An introduction to the science of natural history and biota of Georgia, as well as the impacts of humans on regional and national resources (overfishing, human-driven extinctions). Students will gain familiarity with the geography, geology, plants, and animals (especially vertebrates) of the Appalachians, Piedmont, Coastal Plain, and islands of Georgia.

Course uses case studies to explore human impacts on ecological and evolutionary processes that underlie life (e.g., reproduction, mating systems, life histories) and death (e.g., predation, disease, decomposition) across a diversity of species. Human-environment interactions that impact ecological populations, species interactions, and students’ daily lives will be emphasized.

Introduction to climate, climate change, and the influence of terrestrial ecosystems and humans on climate.

A systems-focused conceptual basis for environmental problem solving, specifically addressing water issues. Systems approaches to sustainability, challenges of Anthropocene environmental change, and solutions to connected water-food-energy problems are explored. Focus on local to regional watersheds, water quality and quantity, biodiversity loss, communication, and systems change.

Emerging infectious diseases are a significant threat to modern society. This course will examine the rise of new pathogens in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the context of global environmental trends, including changes to trade and travel, land use, the distribution of wealth and poverty, and climate change.

Introduction to the management, analysis, interpretation, and communication of ecological data. Students will practice critically evaluating data-based claims, developing and implementing analytical workflows (i.e., data import, cleaning, statistical analysis, and visualization) to solve data-based ecological problems, and interpreting and communicating findings from data.

Course provides training in field-based animal ecology, introducing students to field techniques, and generating meaning from field collected data to address scientific questions. Course emphasizes the scientific process: making observations, asking questions, proposing hypotheses, designing fieldwork, data collection and analysis, and oral and written communication.