Solving Energy & Environmental Problems

Taught by: Prof Seah Kar Heng

Reviews

AY 25/26, Sem 2

Content (Structure/Organization): 

Course was structured such that we look at the reasons for climate change in the first half, then solutions to deal with climate change in the second half. While Prof Seah is from CDE, his lessons integrate some social science perspectives, especially those in international relations (quite friendly, not very academically rigorous). Prof Seah also invited four guest lecturers from engineering and philosophy, which I think most of the class agrees was especially valuable. Otherwise, most of the "science" taught here are engineering principles; there aren't formulae or mathematics to remember at the back of your hand.

Manageability of Workload: 

Low and manageable. You have time to manage your assignments. Expect one presentation and a short essay per half semester. No grades will be released, but comments will be given accordingly. 

Ease/Difficulty of Attaining Grades:

Look out in lessons what Prof Seah emphasises in his lectures; it gives you some idea of how "good" papers are written. Useful visuals like infographics and maps are a go-to.

Learning Value/Recommendation: 

Guest lectures are very insightful!

About the Instructor:

Many of us appreciated the guest lecturers that Prof Seah invited. In addition, Prof Seah assigns group presentations, which took up a total of four weeks across the seminar, where you learn from your peers about the latest developments in climate science and politics.

AY 24/25, Sem 2

Content (Structure/Organization): 5

Structure:

First half energy, second half environmental

3 guest lectures, 2 field trips 

1 group presentation in each half of the semester

Assessment:

Class Participation (although there is lowkey not much opportunity for this)

Group Presentation x2

Midterm Essay

Final Essay

Content:

If you already consider yourself to be someone interested and relatively well-versed in environmental and energy issues, expect to already be familiar with 70-80% of the course content. Lots of the topics covered are quite surface level and basic, with not much depth. In fact I would say for some topics (eg. nuclear) NSS covers the same things in greater depth. Exceptions are the guest lectures and the student presentations, which can be quite heavy. But all in all if you're someone with a decent level of knowledge in these issues and are looking to stretch yourself in this course/field, you might not be getting what you want with this course. However, if you feel like you're someone with very little familiarity on this topic and want to get a brief overview that's accessible, maybe this is the course for you. 

However, the essays essentially do not need to be related to any of the content taught in class or during the presentations (I could write the same thing I did without taking this course), which means there is also lowkey no need to pay attention during class. Whether this is good or bad depends on how you like your NUSC courses.

Manageability of Workload: 4

As mentioned, you don't need to pay attention to the class to score, so actually can be quite little. Main heavy parts would be preparing for student presentations and writing the essays. There are no readings.

Ease/Difficulty of Attaining Grades:

Remember to include footnotes, graphs, charts and headers in your essays. Other than this, grading is lowkey a black box, so I can't help u there.

Learning Value/Recommendation: 1

As mentioned, not really, because I would consider myself to be someone who has already some knowledge in this area. So I don't think I learnt much from this course tbh, except for the amount of research i had to do on my own to do the essays and the presentations. 

But this might be different for someone who doesn't have that much knowledge! and I think different people have different expectations so experiences will differ.

About the Instructor:

He's quite well-versed in his field (mechanical engineering) and some others, but there are some topics where he covers things a bit basically so I'm not sure how much he knows about them. But I personally feels he is aware of this and chooses to mitigate it by inviting guest speakers, which is a great idea.

Additional Remarks:

It's quite a FASS-friendly NST :)