Overview

About Environmental Studies

Environmental issues are among the most pressing ones facing humanity. This major will give you a multidisciplinary understanding of how humans and the environment affect each other, and will help you identify approaches that are more sustainable for both. You will investigate issues including global climate change, risk in worldwide food and healthcare systems, reduction in biodiversity and human cultural diversity, and environmental justice. Along the way, you will develop critical thinking skills as well as cultural, ethical, and scientific competencies.

Students and staff help clean up community compost area


Read about Wagner College's partnership with Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Gardens to rebuild and clean up a community compost area.


Read about some of the environmental studies scholarship winners, student scholars, and student/faculty research work being supported by a bequest from Wagner grad and environmentalist John Deane '53.


Read about a Wagner College composting study where students recycled cafeteria scraps to renew the soil in their on-campus garden.

 

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CLASSES OF NOTE

Environmental Biology

Provides an introduction to the living world and human impacts on it. Fundamental ecological concepts are presented to show how nature works as a web of interconnected factors. Major environmental problems and their possible solutions are discussed.

The Raw and the Cooked

Everybody eats, but how do we choose what to eat? We are constrained by our metabolic needs, the foods that are available to us, and our beliefs about food and nutrition. Using a biocultural perspective we will examine the ways in which foods have shaped our evolution, our history and environment, and our current world.

Environmental Pollution and Health

A course addressing water and air pollution in developing countries, with special focus on the emerging groundwater arsenic contamination in a number of countries. Faculty-led field visits to arsenic-affected areas in Bangladesh or India are arranged as part of the course work.

Class trip to Bangladesh

“Professor Alauddin was like dad, educator, and tour guide in Bangladesh. He's a key researcher in all this, and he knows a lot of crucial people.”