Institution: American University of Armenia (2015-2016)
Instructors: Co-taught with two additional faculty per semester
# of semesters: 2
# of students: 25 per semester
Level: undergraduate
This upper division course is designed for undergraduate students to gain a deeper understanding and competence in environmental project design, implementation, and evaluation. The projects can be in technology, science, conservation, management, restoration, promotion/marketing, education, and other related topics. The course, however, emphasizes data collection and analysis for assessing the success and impact of project ideas. The students will design and complete a project for the course. The types of environmental projects will vary depending on student and faculty agreement. The projects may be related but not limited to the following broad topics: Clean technologies; IT, satellite, remote sensing solutions in environmental protection; alternative transport, clean transport; renewable‐energy generation or energy efficiency; sustainable water use, solid waste management, sustainable agriculture and food production; mining pollution prevention/management; forest protection/management/restoration; watershed protection/management/restoration; air‐quality protection/management/restoration; and flora or fauna monitoring/conservation/restoration.
“The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard”.
—Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day
Everyone has the opportunity to make this planet a better place to live, and this course is one step in that direction. In this project-based course, every student selects an environmental topic or issue of their choice and develops a semester-long project. Once the instructors approve of the student’s topic and proposed research plan, the student will then spend the rest of the semester developing, implementing, managing, and evaluating their environmental project.
This course focuses on the full implementation of the semester project, not just a series of assessments leading to the development of a project proposal. Every student will work on an individual topic with one-on-one supervision from one of the course instructors. The student is encouraged to work with other individuals and/or groups (NGOs, international organizations, government officials, school liaison, business managers, etc.) to develop and implement their project. This will engage the student with environmental issues beyond the classroom, engage local community members, and spread environmental education beyond the walls of AUA. Depending on the nature of the topic selected, students may need to: conduct a literature review, perform lab analysis, get training or certification, conduct interviews, receive government approval, give presentations or lectures to students, and/or travel to project study areas to achieve project success.
In the classroom, students will work with their instructors and their peers to review documents, aide idea development and refinement, discuss project successes and setbacks, and evaluate peer work. Additionally, through lectures, activities, assignments, and readings, students study a range of project-related topics such as project management, evaluation, monitoring, effective communication, survey development, and more. For each of these components the student develops a section of their semester project report. By the end of the semester each student develops a report that investigates the entire project management process from idea development to post-mortem analysis.
This quantitative science course enables students to develop an overview of project management through lectures, discussion, video presentations, guest lectures, simulation games, and more. Each session may include a mixture of lecture, short videos, student presentations, in-class activities, and class discussion. In order to promote dialogue and discussion as a class, active participation is required (engaging in discussion, answering questions, working with peers, and completing assignments on time). Students must therefore come to lecture each day having read the required reading(s) and reviewed previous material so that everyone is prepared and able to thoughtfully contribute to each of our sessions. This will allow students to develop an understanding of the key perspectives we will study in this course.
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
The previous course-specific learning outcomes seek to fulfill the following university-wide learning outcomes: