This course invites students to explore their personal connection to climate change while we examine its underlying processes, the impacts of warming, and potential solutions. Drawing on both Indigenous and Western science, students gain a holistic understanding of climate change’s environmental, cultural, and social dimensions. Through project-based work in observation, data analysis, modeling, planning, and communication, students develop the skills to help shape the future in a time of unprecedented change.

Geographic Information System, or GIS, is any system used to manage, analyze, and visualize spatial data. These systems help users identify patterns and relationships between spatial data stored in layers. These complex systems have been used since the 1960s in virtually every discipline that uses spatial data, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. In this course, you will learn the fundamental structure and core concepts associated with GIS and practice applying the concepts in QGIS using a variety of spatial datasets.

In this course, students take on the challenge of quantitative modeling of Earth’s climate. This is done by employing high-level programming languages (such as Python) to develop custom code that models Earth's climate, and by using existing global-scale applications (such as earth.nullschool.net). Students also acquire systems thinking skills associated with climate dynamics, especially feedbacks, time delays, and the notion of stocks and flows. The course also includes investigations into climate privilege, including the benefits and burdens associated with fossil fuel use across time, geography, and wealth, and models of discourse about those topics.

Understanding how water moves through Earth’s systems—and what affects its quality—is critical to managing increasingly scarce global resources. This course explores the key physical processes that govern water movement, storage, and condition across surface and subsurface environments. Students also examine climate-driven changes to water systems and their unequal impacts on global communities. A hands-on lab component features fieldwork, experimentation, and modeling, as students collect and analyze hydrologic data. 

This course examines the major components of Earth’s cryosphere—including snow, permafrost, sea ice, glaciers, and ice sheets—and their influence on climate, hydrology, ecosystems, and society. Students engage with foundational concepts about the physical properties and controls of frozen systems, then apply their understanding through in-person exploration, data interpretation, and research presentations and discussions with cryospheric scientists. The course highlights climate-driven transformations in frozen landscapes and their disproportionate impacts on polar communities. A hands-on lab component integrates fieldwork and lab-based learning, giving students direct experience with cryospheric data, tools, and techniques.