Studying for a cleaner planet
While our neighbours to the south deal with a president who denies climate change, Canada continues to make steps towards leaving a cleaner planet for future generations — at least that’s what Brock University hopes to accomplish with the addition of a new minor program focused on environmental sustainability.
Starting this fall, the program will combine economics with social and environmental sciences, teaching students to explore different methods of protecting natural environments while simultaneously improving the quality of human life. The course will focus on three major aspects of sustainability: Climate change, resource depletion and pollution, Gary Pickering, acting director of the Brock University Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, says in a media release. He says the course was created mainly as a demand to meet student requests for such programs, adding that it’s nice to see students are focused on these types of issues, even with the backwards progression in the United States regarding issues on sustainability.
“Searching through the undergraduate calendar, we realized that many departments and centres integrate environmental sustainability concepts into their courses,” says research centre director Ryan Plummer in the release.
“As environmental sustainability is a trans-disciplinary field of study, it was obvious that we should collaborate with these units across campus.”
According to Brock, the course will provide students an opportunity to study sustainability issues from a trans-disciplinary perspective — thinking outside the traditional boundaries of your study — and gain practical insight into how Canada and the world is moving forward to address those issues.
It will also focus on developing solutions for businesses, with regards to changing environmental laws.
The course is offered through the environmental sustainability research centre, which has offered a graduate program in sustainability, science and society since 2014. It will be the first opportunity undergraduates have to take a dedicated course in their field, open to Brock students taking any program.
This year marks the fifth anniversary of the environmental sustainability research centre at Brock.