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Environmental Communication Minor

About The Program

Environmental communication is a growing career field. The environmental communication minor provides an understanding of environmental communication trends, policies, and practices to equip students in a variety of majors with the necessary knowledge and skills to become effective managers and leaders in business, and in public and nonprofit organizations.

Environmental issues are complex, and every sector of society has a stake in clearly and effectively relating their messages or concerns to the public. The courses include both theory and practice and focus on the achievement of effective environmental communication skills to assist with the ever-changing problems and issues in environmental studies.

Graduates with an environmental communication minor will be able to analyze the various environmental issues, the values and assumptions behind those issues, and the communication tools available for persuasion and public policy decisions.

How to enroll

Current students: Declare this program

Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.

Future students: Apply now

Apply to Metropolitan State: Start the journey toward your Environmental Communication Minor now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metropolitan State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.

Get started on your Environmental Communication Minor

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Requirements (20 credits)

+ Environmental Communication (20 credits)

This course focuses on the multidisciplinary field of environmental communication and helps students understand the ways in which environmental issues and conflicts develop, the values underlying the ideologies on these issues, the ways in which these values are presented, and the variety of scientific and technical communication genres involved in understanding environmental communication messages. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.

Full course description for Environmental Communication

This course surveys the key themes and developments in world environmental history; that is, the history of how human societies have changed their environments and how the environment has influenced the courses of societies. It examines pre-modern cultures' intellectual, economic, and technological approaches to the environment, the role of epidemic and environmental transformation in the colonial age, and the revolutionary changes introduced to the environment in the modern period of industrialization and population growth and the rapid consumption of resources that has involved. The course places contemporary environmental issues in their deep historical contexts.

Full course description for World Environmental History

This course surveys the history of environmentalism in America over the last 100 years. Students are introduced to the ideas of the environmentalists-from Theodore Roosevelt and Rachel Carson to EarthFirst!'s Dave Foreman and Vice President Al Gore-about wilderness preservation, resource conservation, public health and, fundamentally, about the proper relationship between humans and the natural world. Environmentalist thought and actions are considered in the context of ecological and resource crises (such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the oil crisis of the 1970s), of problems created by technological applications (such as the widespread use of DDT) and of particular cultural developments (such as the closing of the "frontier" at the turn of the century and the growth of the counterculture in the 1960s).

Full course description for The Greening of America: Environmental History since 1900

This class focuses on the history and background of the social and environmental issues confronting racial and ethnic communities in the United States. Students learn about the practice and politics of ecological inequality, community initiatives which have developed to combat such inequality, and how environmental justice has emerged as a viable and powerful political movement. This course is useful to students interested in environment and public policy as well as racial and ethnic studies.

Full course description for Environmental Justice and Public Policy

An introduction to environmental science and the range of environmental issues that affect people on a global, local and personal level. Topics include sustainability, ecology, biodiversity, solid waste, water pollution, energy sources, air pollution, and climate change. Includes lab. The online version of this course requires students to purchase lab materials. Intended for general education students. Because college-level science courses contain extensive new terminology, many students find it helpful to take LING 111-Vocabulary Study prior to taking this course.

Full course description for Environmental Science

This course familiarizes students with characteristic works of nature writing and environmental literature by authors across the globe and from different eras. In these works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, students will study themes and issues such, as but not limited to, primitivism and the pastoral; critical animal and plant studies, consumer culture, and overconsumption, the aesthetics of nature and nature writing; nature writing and spirituality, Romanticism and the natural world; the Anthropocene and geologic time, ecofeminism; global futurisms and dystopian imaginings. Students will examine formal aesthetics, structure, and audience reception in order to consider strategies for storytelling and sustainability in the era of climate catastrophe.

Full course description for Nature Writing and Environmental Literature

Choose either Hist 363: World Environmental History OR Hist 333 The Greening of America: Environmental History since 1900