Environmental Studies Major
Program Director: Professor Jennifer Rivers
(617) 373-3039
j.rivers@neu.edu
The Environmental Studies program is an interdisciplinary program designed for students who wish to apply an understanding of both social and scientific issues to the solution of environmental problems. The goal of the major is to enable students to conceptualize and to attack "unstructured problems." These are the problems with many more variables than equations or problems for which there may be no obvious single best solution. This type of problem dominates natural environmental systems and the solutions to environmental problems may require balancing scientific and societal concerns. By the time students graduate, they should be able to identify an environmental problem, develop a plan to address the problem, identify and organize resources, which they would need to solve the problem, and know how to put a plan to solve the problem into action.
The program is structured to provide a progressive development in skills and knowledge. It is flexible in that it allows latitude in upper-level course choices, selected with the approval of a faculty advisor, to suit individual student interests. Students are strongly encouraged to complete a dual major combining Environmental Studies and another major.