Sustainability-Themed Courses at LIU Post
Academic Year 2013-2014
EVS 501 Principles of Environmental Sustainability (Spring 2014)
This seminar is designed to provide overarching context for students in the Environmental
Sustainability Program. The underlying philosophies, theoretical perspectives, and contemporary
practices and challenges pertaining to sustainability are discussed. Among other topics, the
course focuses on sustainability’s emphasis on identifying and understanding the complex
interconnections between environmental, economic, and social systems. It also explores the
methods of inquiry and analysis that social and physical scientists employ in their work on
sustainability and the importance of striving for synthesis among these respective approaches.
The course guides students to an understanding of sustainability’s multiple dimensions and
prepares them to approach remaining program coursework with an eye toward synthesis and
integration.
EVS 520/GGR 27: Sustainable Land Use and Transportation (Spring 2014)
Metropolitan regions are home to over 80 percent of the country’s population and consume
comparable levels of resources. Building sustainable cities will require redesigning buildings,
neighborhoods, and entire metropolitan landscapes – but pricing signals must support these
goals. This course reviews and evaluates the tools and criteria that urban professionals use to
incrementally shift urban investments toward humane and sustainable systems. Specific topics
include suburbanization and sprawl, smart growth, transit oriented development, political
ecology, and case studies from the New York metropolitan region and other cities.
EVS 530: Sustainable Energy Systems (Fall 2013)
This course examines solar, wind, conservation, and efficiency from regional, national, and
international perspectives – with an emphasis on electric systems. What are the strengths and
weaknesses of different state and national frameworks for developing an economically
successful electric energy system? What cultural contexts, administrative actions, legislation,
and/or coalitions contribute to these successes? What scientific principles enable technological
innovations in wind, solar, and other renewable energy systems?
EVS 610: Material and Energy Flow (Fall 2013)
Modern society draws enormous quantities of resources, uses them, and ultimately disposes of
the wastes. This interdisciplinary course explores the flow of materials and energy from their
sources, through the urban/suburban environment, to the resultant wastes. Topics will include
conventional energy resources (coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium), building materials (cement,
asphalt, iron and other metals), food resources, and wastes (municipal waste disposal, industrial
waste, mine waste, air pollution). Lectures will present the science of the acquisition, processing,
usage, and disposal of each resource, followed by analyses of the economic (and, where relevant,
political) dynamics of these geographic processes. Students will contrast existing resource flows
with more sustainable alternatives. These analyses will provide a methodological framework for
evaluating regional practices and policies.
EVS 620: Environmental Sustainability Seminar (Spring 2014)
This end-of-program capstone course focuses on practical problem solving for environmental
sustainability with an emphasis on the New York/Long Island metropolitan region. Coursework
involves the selection of specific issues and problems of concern to the region and the
development of strategic approaches to manage, mitigate, and address them. Students are guided
in the formulation of solutions that incorporate an interdisciplinary problem solving approach
and that demonstrate an understanding of the complex multidimensional issues related to the
specific problems under investigation.
GGR 518/ERS 11: Topics in Applied Conservation (Fall 2013)
The application of geographic principles to the problems of environmental conservation is
discussed. The course will include detailed studies of selected aspects of resource conservation.
Students must demonstrate an ability to explain the various ways in which geographers and other
environmental scientists organize knowledge and communicate the results of their research in
their disciplines.
ERS 501/ERS 17/GGR 17: Mapping Environmental Data with GIS (Fall 2013)
This is a hands-on, introductory geographic information system (GIS) course on managing
spatial data using a computer. The course is based on the National Center for Geographic
Information and Analysis introductory curriculum using ArcView software. The course
addresses GIS principles, creating and querying spatial views and themes, importing and
exporting data, map projections, geocoding, attribute tabular data, charts, layouts and
applications. The course is lecture and laboratory and is designed for the practitioner and as an
introduction to practical GIS applications.
GLY 550/GLY 50: Environmental Geology (Fall 2013)
This course studies the geological foundations of environmental science. It examines natural
geologic systems in relation to human concerns, with special attention paid to issues of relevance
to Long Island and the New York metropolitan area. Topics include a detailed study of soil
properties and soil mechanics, mass wasting, fundamental groundwater hydrology, analysis of
stream flooding, earthquake seismology and risk assessment.
GLY 523/GLY 23: Environmental Geochemistry (Spring 2014)
This course is the study of the chemistry of the earth with emphasis on the surficial geologic
environment. Topics include the chemistry of crustal rocks; chemical weathering and its
products; the chemistry of natural waters and of soils; isotope geochemistry as a tracer of
environmental processes; natural bedrock-related hazards such as radon; global chemical cycles,
especially the role of geologic feedbacks in the carbon cycle, and the moderating effects on
global change.
SOC 98: Environmental Sociology (Fall 2013)
This course introduces students to the growing interdisciplinary field of environmental
sociology, which examines the complex relationship between society and the environment.
Topics include the impacts of humans on the environment, how the environment constructs
human society, and more specifically, the debates on climate change, natural disasters, food and
agriculture, technology, energy, environmental conservation, risks, environmental justice, and
environmental sustainability in the global world. We will also investigate the social-structural
causes of environmental degradation, such as consumption and commodity production, and how
our own daily lives impact the environment. In addition, we will examine social movements,
NGOs, and individuals who work to resist environmental degradation.
FIN 359: Business of Clean Technology (Fall 2013)
This course focuses on clean technology and examines ways that businesses can help improve
the environment. Clean tech businesses can be looked at from an investment standpoint, such as
investing in alternative energies, as well as a corporate standpoint in terms of the financial
viability of capital budgeting projects. The course will examine pressing environmental
problems and then focus on energy solutions such as solar power, wind power and geothermal
power, in addition to other forms of alternative energy. Business cases that focus on sustainable
business will be studied.