Imagine the first breaths of a young Earth, life emerging in ancient oceans, continents colliding, greenhouse worlds giving way to frozen landscapes, and mass extinctions transforming the course of evolution. What drove these changes, and what can they tell us about our changing planet today?

Explore billions of years of geologic time through the connections between plate tectonics, climate, oceans, and life. Discover the forces that shape our planet, decode clues preserved in the rock record, and uncover what they reveal about its future.

Stories of Earth's history are all around us, waiting to be told. Students become science storytellers themselves, bringing a rock, mineral, or fossil to life through a multimedia project for a broader audience.

(3-credits; Spring odd years)

A consensus gap exists between scientific and public perceptions of the existence and causes of current global warming and climate change. Why does this divide exist, and how can we bridge it?

Investigate the science of Earth's changing climate, from natural and human-driven climate variability and insights from paleoclimate records to modern observations, future climate projections, and pathways for mitigating climate change. Alongside the science, examine how climate change is represented in public discourse, why misconceptions and misinformation spread, and how effective communication can connect scientific knowledge with policy.

Examine how climate change is portrayed in films and popular culture, tackle the challenges of collective climate action through board games, and put communication skills into practice through conversations with fellow students on campus.

(3-credits; Spring even years)

What can a good book teach us about our relationship with the environment?

Dig into contemporary environmental nonfiction and examine how humans interact with, depend on, and transform the natural world. From rewilding and Indigenous knowledge to animal behavior, wildlife conservation, pollution, environmental justice, and sustainability, each reading offers a fresh lens through which to understand our place on the planet.

Engage in student-led discussions, critical reading, and reflective writing. Develop your voice as an environmental communicator through dialogue and synthesis of ideas across disciplines.

(3-credits; Fall odd years)

International summer school of the USSP consortium focuses on past climate dynamics with special emphasis on the analysis of long-term carbon cycling and its implications in the understanding of present and future climates. USSP integrates lectures, symposia, field trips, and exercises on the many different areas of paleoclimatology including biogeochemical cycling, paleoceanography, continental systems, and all aspects of deep-time climate modelling. These techniques and systems are explored through interactive discussions of Cretaceous OAEs, P/E hyperthermals, the Greenhouse-Icehouse transition, Neogene and Quaternary climate dynamics.  

https://urbinossp.wordpress.com/