2018-2019 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Courses
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ECON 304 - Macroeconomics II- Business Cycles
This course introduces real business-cycle theory as well as monetary models and business cycle theory with nominal rigidities in a closed economy setting. The course also presents the microeconomic foundations of nominal rigidities, the demand for money and the effect of monetary policy and dynamic inconsistency.
Prerequisites: ECON 303
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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ECON 307 - International Economics
This course will cover the theory of international trade patterns, trade policies, and empirical work in both these areas. We will strive to achieve a balance between theory, empirical literature, and current work on international trade. In doing so, it will emphasize both theoretical (mathematical/analytical) models as well as empirical studies of how well those models fit “real world” data. Moreover, the course will frequently compare and contrast alternative theories/conceptions of the nature of international trade and the gains or losses thereof. Understanding the economic intuition behind the technically demanding models as well as thinking critically about the assumptions behind the theories and how well they fit actual trading economies will be a major focus.
Prerequisites: ECON 302
Anticipated Terms Offered: periodically
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ECON 308 - Open Economy Macroeconomics
This course covers topics in open economy macroeconomics. Its purpose is to expose students to recent developments in the study of international business cycle transmission and the effect and conduct of macroeconomic policies in open economies. The course studies both models with flexible prices and nominal rigidities.
Prerequisites: ECON 303 and
Anticipated Terms Offered: periodically
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ECON 317 - Research
This is a variable unit graduate course for students engaged in research at the PhD level.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every Semester
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ECON 322 - Labor Economics
Graduate-level course analyzing models of labor supply, labor demand, and labor market equilibrium. Particular attention is paid to connecting theoretical models to empirical applications. Variations on models that account for market imperfections and non-market forces such as trade unions and government regulations are also addressed.
Prerequisites: ECON 302
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every other year
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ECON 326 - Industrial Organization
This course is a comprehensive treatment of the standard topics in the field of industrial organization. It is designed to provide a broad introduction to topics and industries that current researchers are studying as well as to expose students to a wide variety of techniques. It will start the process of preparing economics Ph.D. students to conduct thesis research in the area, and may also be of interest to doctoral students working in other areas of economics and related fields.
Prerequisites: ECON 302
Anticipated Terms Offered: every other year
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ECON 328 - Economic Growth & Development
This course focuses mainly on economic growth. The first part of the course is a historical survey of development theory. We discuss the ideas of the ‘classical’ development theorists, structuralist and dependency theory, and the ‘basic needs’ approach to development. Next, we look at more modern incarnations of development theory beginning with the neoclassical critique of classical and structuralist development economics and continuing with contemporary growth theory. After reviewing basic growth theory, we spend the rest of the semester looking at the empirical evidence for various proposed determinants of economic growth including: human capital, institutions, inequality, natural resources, foreign aid and international trade.
Prerequisites: ECON 302
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every other year
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ECON 329 - Microeconomics of Development
This course will discuss various topics in development economics. Some of the topics covered will be: Human Capital - nutrition and health; Human Capital - education; Intra-Household Decision-making/Gender in the household; Land Tenancy and Land Reform; Technology Adoption; Credit Markets; Savings and Investment; Risk and Insurance; Social Capital; Corruption; and Natural Resource and Microeconomic Development.
Prerequisites: ECON 302
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every other year
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ECON 357 - Environmental Economics
This course is one of the three Ph.D. courses in the Spatial Environmental Economics field sequence. The material that will be covered includes the application of microeconomics to optimal natural resource extraction and use, analysis of pollution control regulation, and the valuation of environmental amenities. The first third of the course will cover nonrenewable and renewable natural resource use. The second third will present basic externality theory and the role of economic incentives for pollution control. The final third will introduce the methods developed for the measurement of environmental benefits. Throughout the course, current environmental policy issues will be discussed in context.
Prerequisites: ECON 302
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every other year
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ECON 359 - Spatial Environmental Analysis
This course is one of the three Ph.D. courses in the Spatial Environmental Economics field sequence. While space has always played some role in economics, in recent years there has been an explosion of research that incorporates a spatial dimension in environmental and natural resource economics. The course examines spatially-based analytical models of the management of natural resources: water, fisheries, forestry, land, and biological diversity. It also introduces models that consider the causes and consequences of spatial variation in other environmental policies. It studies the use of tools such as geographic information systems and spatial econometrics to improve the measurements of benefits and costs in these models for policy analysis. Approximately one half of the course will present analytical models and policy applications and one half of the course will focus on spatial econometrics.
Prerequisites: ECON 302 and .
Anticipated Terms Offered: every other year
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ECON 360 - Probability and Statistics
An introduction to probability theory and mathematical statistics that emphasizes the probabilistic foundations required to understand probability models and statistical methods. Topics covered will include the probability axioms, basic combinatorics, random variables and their probability distributions, mathematical expectation and common families of probability distributions.
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ECON 365 - Basic Econometrics
Econ 365 is a one-semester core course in econometrics at the graduate level. The course assumes a strong background in multivariate calculus, linear algebra, and basic probability theory. Intermediate-to-advanced undergraduate level courses in statistics/econometrics are also highly recommended. The course will focus mainly on random samples and linear regression. Students will be exposed to various estimation approaches such as Least Squares, Maximum Likelihood, and the Generalized Method of Moments. Additional topics such as Empirical Likelihood and the Bootstrap will be covered time permitting. Special attention will be given to applications using real data. For this purpose we will typically use the econometrics package STATA.
Prerequisites: ECON 360
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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ECON 367 - Graduate Research Seminar - Empirical Methods
This course is designed to prepare economics graduate students for empirical research. Students in their second or third year of graduate study, who have taken some core courses in economic theory and econometrics, are encouraged to take this course. Through reading recent research articles and in-class discussion, students will learn how to identify empirical research questions, how to develop a research plan, where to look for data, what are commonly-used empirical strategies, how to write and present an empirical paper, etc. This course should help students get a quick start with their dissertation research and avoid pitfalls and stumbling blocks along the way.
Anticipated Terms Offered: every other year
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ECON 368 - Graduate Research Seminar - Formulating a Research Project
This seminar provides a background to formulating and then executing a research project in economics. Along the way, we will focus on several research skills that include identifying and motivating a topic for research, writing an analytical review of the literature, identifying the appropriate theoretical framework and writing a research proposal. Over the course of the semester, developing and improving writing skills will be emphasized. Students taking Applied Econometrics are expected to use this course to formulate a proposal for their applied econometrics paper.
Anticipated Terms Offered: every other year
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ECON 371 - Introduction to Mathematical Economics
An introductory survey of the use of mathematical methods in economic analysis. Topics include elements of linear algebra, optimization and differential equations.
Anticipated Terms Offered: every year
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ECON 377 - Urban Economics
This course is designed to acquaint students with urban economic analysis through reading and presenting a selective sample of research articles. It will cover topics such as the economic theory of cities, agglomeration economies, urban growth, housing market, racial housing segregation, neighborhood effects, urban public schools, and urban problems (e.g., crime, poverty, and congestion). The course has two goals: (1) it provides students with a basic understanding of the economics of cities and urban problems; and (2) it introduces to students research techniques used in urban economics and related fields.
Prerequisites: ECON 302
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every other year
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ECON 385 - PhD Proposal Writing
Offered for Variable credit for Economics PhD students who are writing their proposal.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every Semester
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ECON 394 - Dissertation Writing
This is a variable unit, graduate course for students engaged in writing a Ph.D. Dissertation.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every Semester
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ECON 395 - Department Colloquium
The Department of Economics holds a regular Seminar Series where prominent researchers are invited to come to the department to speak about their research. Economics graduate (Ph.D.) students are required to attend/participate in the seminar series. May be repeatable for credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every semester
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ECON 397 - Dissertation
Graduate students work on their dissertation research under the direction of a faculty member. Offered for variable credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: every semester
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ECON 399 - Directed Study
Graduate students construct an independent study course on a topic approved and directed by a faculty member. Offered for variable credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: every semester
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ECON 1010 - Economics and the World Economy
The last few years have proven to all of us that what happens in one nation’s economy can have major impact- good or bad- on the economies of another nation. How and why this happens is important for us to understand. Comparisons across countries provide a deeper understanding of business cycles, unemployment, monetary policy, economic growth, currencies and fiscal policy This course, an introduction to international economic interactions and the macroeconomic analysis of economies, develops basic economic concepts including market analysis, trade, and demand and supply in the macroeconomy. These economic concepts provide tools to analyze current issues such as economic stability, debt crises and policies towards trade.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP (summer only)
Anticipated Terms Offered: various
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ECON 1011 - Principles of Economics
This course is an introduction to the analysis of the economy using economic models. The first part of the course studies microeconomics - how individual actors in the economy, both consumers and producers, make economic decisions. The course then examines the implications of those microeconomic decisions for social welfare. Finally, in the last part of the class we will discuss issues of economic growth, business cycles, unemployment, and inflation that form the core of macroeconomics. Building on the basic principles of economics, we develop a framework for understanding the role of monetary and fiscal policies in affecting the economy.
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ECON 2051 - Microeconomics
Describes and analyzes how a market-oriented economy functions in answering basic economic concerns. Interspersed with theory, the course focuses on particular examples that demonstrate the use of microeconomics to solve problems faced by decision makers in both the private and public sectors.
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ECON 2052 - Macroeconomics
Focuses on the forces that affect overall performance of the economy, studying the determinants of economic activity and measures of economic performance. In addition, students explore specific current economic problems facing the United States, public policies instituted to deal with problems and repercussions of some of these policies on world economics.
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ECON 2070 - Introduction to International Trade
Why and what do countries trade? Do they benefit from trade? What are tariffs and quotas? Within the framework for the study of international trade that this course will provide, we will examine various trade theories (Ricardian, Heckscher-Ohlin, etc.), welfare implications of trade policies, global trading arrangements (including GATT & WTO) and other issues pertinent to international trade.
Prerequisite:Principles of Economics
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EDUC 060 - Public Schools and Democracy
From Colonial times to the present, Americans have looked to free public education to be the main instrument for all citizens to access political maturity and equality, as well as economic opportunity. In 1848, educator Horace Mann wrote: “Education … is the great equalizer of the conditions of men-the balance-wheel of the social machinery.” In this seminar, using primary documents-laws, reports, and court decisions-both historical and contemporary, we will explore both the historical context and, especially, the current realities in public schools, to determine how effective they have been and are at present in carrying out this crucial responsibility.
Course Designation/Attribute: HP
Anticipated Terms Offered: -
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EDUC 070 - Building Community through Research With
This course focuses on methodologies and epistemologies of research with: collaborative research practices that focus on authentic and critical story-telling through words, images, and creative performance. Rather than researching on people in our community, we seek to build relationships that allow us to co-construct research narratives; helping us learn about ourselves and others in how we relate to the world. In order to delve into research with, we draw from literature that challenges deficit-based thinking, explores the rich community and cultural wealth of all people, and interrogates the way systemic racism, hetero-sexism, classism and other inequities shape many of the stories that we have grown up with.
Course Designation/Attribute: FA
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
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EDUC 152 - Complexities of Urban Schooling
An inquiry into the challenging social and academic questions that pervade urban education using linguistic, sociological and psychological perspectives. Through lecture, discussion and field work, students will explore challenges faced by educators. Students are required to observe in a Worcester Public School classroom for two hours per week (placements are coordinated by Education Dept.). For undergraduate students interested in educational studies. The course is also a prerequisite for the Education minor and for the Master of Arts in Teaching graduate program.
Course Designation/Attribute: DI
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 153 - Participatory (Action) Research with Youth
EDUC 153 focuses on what it means to research with (rather than on) youth. Course participants will become familiar with what youth participatory (action) research is, and how it differs from other qualitative research traditions. Participants will try on the tools of research, such as observing/taking fieldnotes and interviewing, and explore ways of analyzing and representing data, taking into account issues around ethics, power, and the responsibilities of representation. Course participants will collaborate with youth in the community to design, carry out, and present to the public a participatory or participatory action research project.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 155 - Education and Social Policy
Examines social problems, social policy and education. Conceptual tools for the analysis of social policies are used. Examinations of existing programs and social agencies enable students to understand agency functions, client population and the relationship between the individual agency and the larger social-service network. Emphasis is placed on social problems and social solutions, linking individuals and external primary groups with societal resource systems and the impact of social-policy change on individuals and institutions.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 194 - Field Experience: Special Education and Human Services 1
Provide direct, supervised experience within educational and human-services agencies. Placements are based upon students’ experience, goals and academic backgrounds. Placement possibilities include schools, mental-health centers, institutions, the courts, substance-abuse centers, crisis agencies and group homes. A weekly seminar provides the opportunity for students to analyze their field-work experience. Special note: These courses may be taken as a full-year, two-course sequence (EDUC 194 and EDUC 195 ) or as a single course either semester (EDUC 194).
Course Designation/Attribute: POP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 195 - Field Experience: Special Education and Human Services 2
Provide direct, supervised experience within educational and human-services agencies. Placements are based upon students’ experience, goals and academic backgrounds. Placement possibilities include schools, mental-health centers, institutions, the courts, substance-abuse centers, crisis agencies and group homes. A weekly seminar provides the opportunity for students to analyze their field-work experience. Special note: These courses may be taken as a full-year, two-course sequence (EDUC 194 and 195) or as a single course either semester (EDUC 194 ).
Course Designation/Attribute: POP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 208 - Literacy Across the Curriculum
Designed for students teaching at both the middle and secondary levels. Focuses on literary issues affecting learning across all curriculum areas, as well as the particular reading-writing and discourse issues that affect learning in different disciplines. Field work will enable students to try various instructional strategies and assessment practices. Preference will be given to students who plan to enroll in the MAT program.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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EDUC 227 - Culture, Language, and Education
The course’s focus on culture, language, and education is specially designed to draw attention to the possibilities and challenges of educating culturally and sociolinguistically diverse children and youth in U.S. society. Many of the topics examined during the semester will address questions of culture and language, access, and equity and their relationship to education. Fundamental to the course is also the belief that children and adolescents’ cultural, social, racial, historical, and linguistic experiences-both background experiences and daily contexts (e.g., home, school, and community)-are assets to be mined and leveraged with intentionality and purpose.
Prerequisites: EDUC 152
Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-annually
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EDUC 255 - Ethnography at School
This course will use the lens of ethnography to examine the process by which social inequality related to race, class, gender and nation becomes manifest in classrooms and schools. Conversely, we will use the space of schooling to better understand the basic practice of ethnography as one tool for making meaning of social dynamics. To achieve this, we will critically examine several modern and classic school-based ethnographies to better understand the ways that social inequality is constructed and challenged in schools. These analyses will be contrasted with students’ own critical interrogation of their own schooling experiences. Further, students will become situated in local urban classrooms to employ the tools of ethnography in support of teacher action research projects. Thus, in addition to a critical examination of inequality in schooling, this course will provide students with methodological training in the construction of ethnographic field notes and ethnographic interviewing. Such analytical training is valuable not only for students interested in qualitative research, but also for anyone interested in working in schools and seeking to better understand the ways that culture is dynamically negotiated in social groupings. Registration by permission, only.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 261 - Human Development and Learning
Introduces students to central and evolving understandings of human development and their implications for learning and pre-K through 12 schooling. Particular emphasis will be given to cognitive and sociocultural theories of learning and development. Preference will be given to students who plan to enroll in the MAT program.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 264 - Knowledge, Development and Instruction
This is an advanced seminar that combines an in-depth examination of research in critical ethnography, cognitive development, and the learning sciences, with classroom-based research in a public school setting (focusing on Poetry Inside Out as well as learning progressions of key concepts in math, science and classroom discourse).
Participants will select a domain of interest (such as Poetry Inside Out as an innovative literacy program, or new approaches to teaching science based on the Next Generation Science Standards). They will learn ethnographic and discourse analytic research methods, and participate in planning and enacting innovative research and design studies with urban teachers and students.
Course Designation/Attribute: POP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically.
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EDUC 266 - Analysis of Individual Ability and Style
Uses techniques to understand the individual as a whole. The theory of individual assessment, some tools for assessment, and the analysis of assessment data will be covered. Focus is placed on understanding, administering and interpreting both traditional and alternative assessment tools, including measures of cognitive ability, scholastic achievement and personality. Students are required to administer assessment procedures and analyze case histories.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 268 - Psychoeducational Practicum and Seminar
Provides a two-semester placement, eight to 10 hours a week, within the pupil-personnel department of a public-school system. A school psychologist and/or counselor will function as an ongoing supervisor. Activities include experience in conducting and interpreting psychoeducational assessments, obtaining social and developmental-history information through home visits, and observing and participating in the development of individualized educational plans as part of the team evaluation process.
Course Designation/Attribute: POP
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 269 - The Skilled Helper
Designed for the development of the helping professional. Emphasis is placed on dynamics of the helping relationship and basic interviewing skills. Class exercises are used to facilitate skill development. Students who are not concurrently taking a field course are placed in a human-service agency one-half day per week.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 280 - Teaching English Language Learners
This course focuses on the theoretical perspectives, research and pedagogical practices involving English Language Learners. The course is designed for MAT candidates and undergraduates who are interested in exploring the practices and approaches for supporting language and literacy development of English language learners, the conceptual frameworks and research out of which the practices have evolved, and the applications of the principles of Sheltered English Immersion.
Prerequisites: Complexities of Urban Education
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually in the Spring
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EDUC 281 - Critical Pedagogies
Critical Pedagogies frames a critique of the role of education as a means for reproducing social inequalities and presents a radical alternative of education for liberation and social change. It seeks to bridge theory with action - enacting a social justice agenda in one’s work with others. In this course, we will think deeply about various anti-oppressive pedagogies - critical, feminist, queer and critical race - while also practicing together our learning using these different pedagogies. We will attempt to learn by doing and modeling as much as by reading and listening. As well, this is a course in which you will actively engage with action, working collaboratively on education projects designed for social transformation in and beyond the local community.
Course Designation/Attribute: DI
Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically
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EDUC 283 - Ways of Knowing in History (Elementary)
This Way of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in History, critical content questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Prerequisites: EDUC 152
Corequisites: EDUC 152
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 284 - Ways of Knowing in the Humanities (Elementary)
This course will address teaching and learning within the field of English Language Arts through various engagements with literature written for children and young adults. Through class discussions, readings, writings and school based placements participants will consider how elementary students learn about literature. Participants will explore what it means to ‘come to know’ through the discipline of literary study.
This course is worth a half unit (0.5) of credit.
Prerequisites: EDUC 152
Corequisites: EDUC 152
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 285 - Ways of Knowing in History (Secondary)
This Ways of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in History, critical content questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Prerequisites: EDUC 152
Corequisites: EDUC 152
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 286 - Ways of Knowing in the Physical and Natural Sciences (Elementary, Middle/Secondary)
Basing our approach on the way scientists themselves learn about nature, this course explores science learning through experiment and theory. Our students are often simultaneously cast as both learner and teacher, in which roles they investigate a variety of science curricula and experience different classroom learning environments. Through discussions, readings and hands-on science lessons, they confront science content, science pedagogy, and the real-world constraints of state curriculum frameworks, professional standards and high-stakes testing. Observations in Worcester Public School classrooms provide a rich resource for testing the ideas against the everyday realities.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 287 - Ways of Knowing in Mathematics (Elementary, Middle/Secondary)
This Way of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in Mathematics, critical content questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 289 - Ways of Knowing in the Humanities (Secondary)
This Ways of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in the Humanities, critical content questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Prerequisites: EDUC 152
Corequisites: EDUC 152
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 291 - An Exploration of Multicultural Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Students will read, discuss, and analyze multicultural literature for children by and about people of diverse backgrounds including diversity in race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, and country. Books examined will include picture books, realistic fiction, non-fiction, biographies, memoirs, verse novels, graphic novels, science fiction, fairy tales, fantasy, and wordless books. While multicultural literature written for children will comprise the primary texts in this course, secondary sources from education, linguistics, English, history, sociology, anthropology, critical race theory, women’s studies and communications will provide context and theory to guide analysis.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 298 - Internship
An Academic internship is a practical work experience with an academic component that enables a student to gain knowledge and skills within an organization, industry, or functional area that reflects the student’s academic and professional interests while earning credit. Maybe repeatable for credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every Semester
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EDUC 299 - Directed Readings — Undergraduate
Independent study for qualified students on a selected topic. Permission of instructor required. Offered for variable credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 304 - Teaching as Research Seminar I
This seminar brings together urban-school teachers (at the elementary, middle, and secondary level) with undergraduate students and faculty involved the Next Generation Science Exemplar (NGSX) project. The seminar supports teachers and teacher leaders to reflect on their own practice, as they develop capacity to lead their own NGSX Study groups, while participating in university-based and practitioner-based educational research. The seminar focuses on qualitative, sociolinguistic research in classrooms, emphasizing the study of talk and texts as a vehicle for better understanding students’ learning, developing systematic techniques for describing and critiquing classroom activities, and supporting effective learning among a socioculturally diverse population of students. Participants meet in facilitated groups to carry out qualitative research on their own practice and develop forums through which their work can be disseminated to a wider community of teachers and researchers. By permission only.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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EDUC 308 - Literacy Across the Curriculum
Designed for students teaching at both the middle and secondary levels. Focuses on literary issues affecting learning across all curriculum areas, as well as the particular reading-writing and discourse issues that affect learning in different disciplines.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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EDUC 311 - Teaching and Learning, Part I
Challenges the theory that there is one best way of understanding that students must learn according to that one way, and that their capacity to learn ought to be judged accordingly. Explores many adequate pathways for developing knowledge and emphasizes that teachers who acknowledge and support different pathways help make learning more accessible for students. This premise and its implications for teaching, curriculum, assessment, the formation of learning communities for diverse groups of students, and the role of the teacher in enabling students to actively construct knowledge are explored.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every May.
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EDUC 327 - Culture, Language and Education
Graduate-level course dealing with theories and practices relevant to teaching and learning within a sociocultural perspective. Questions about language and cognition, multicultural and social diversity in the classroom, curricular and pedagogical theories and practices, language and literacy development, bilingual education, access and equity, learning across the life span, and the politics of education are discussed. In all areas, analysis of language and communication is used as a key tool for critical understanding.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 329 - Graphic Novels in the Classroom
Once commonly thought to corrupt the minds of children, comic books and their typically lengthier siblings, graphic novels, are becoming more commonplace in middle and secondary school classrooms. Throughout the past decade a growing number of scholars and educators have argued that graphic novels can serve as fruitful texts for the exploration of topics that are regularly covered in humanities and social science classes. Through the pairing of visual images with words, graphic novels also offer opportunities for teachers to explore how these multimodal texts convey meaning with their students .This course will examine a variety of strategies for introducing graphic novels into the classroom and present a number of these texts that have been successfully integrated into middle and high school classes.
Throughout the semester, we will examine graphic novels such as The Arrival by Shaun Tan, Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda by Jean- Phillippe, Lewis and Clark by Nick Bertozzi, Maus by Art Spielgelman, Nat Turner by Kyle Barker, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan, and Zahara Paradise by Amir and Khalil. Through the reading of these texts we will discuss a variety of possible student learning outcomes and strategies for engaging students in the interrogation of topics such as: the use of anthropomorphism, the development of theme through motif and symbols, the depiction of trauma, subjectivity and perspective in history, visual literacy, and the presence of political messages in art.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically
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EDUC 333 - Literature and Critical Consciousness
This course is designed primarily for full-time middle/secondary teachers.
With a specific focus on the genres of utopian and dystopian fiction, this class will explore speculative fiction as a form of social critique. We will read novels and short stories written for both young adult and general audiences that use imagined future worlds to provoke questions about current social, political, technological and ecological trends. The course is designed for middle and secondary teachers, and will also address questions of critical pedagogy such as: How can we transform our teaching to help awaken our students’ sense of themselves as subjects of history and potential agents of change? What role might the study of literature, and speculative fiction in particular, play in this process? How can literature help to forge bridges between students’ school experiences and identities and the worlds they inhabit outside the classroom?
Anticipated Terms Offered: varied
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EDUC 338 - Literary Non-Fiction
This course will explore multiple genres of contemporary literary non-fiction, including personal essays, literary journalism, memoirs, interviews, biographies, nature writing and sports writing, as well as hybrid forms of creative and narrative non-fiction. We will discuss various difinitions of the term “literary non-fiction,” and the ethical questions that can arise when writers draw upon artistry and imagination in their representation of facts. Authors we will be reading may include Jon Krakauer, Katherine Boo, Alex Kotlowitz, Ted Conover, Mary Roach, John Hersey, Joan Didion, Brent Staples, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Lars Eigner, Annie Dillard, Phillip Gourevitch, Jamaica Kincaid, and more.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Every 2-3 years
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EDUC 348 - Understanding Best Practices
This course introduces Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) middle/secondary students to “best practice” in action, in context-to exemplary teaching and learning as it occurs in an actual setting where teachers teach, students learn, and teachers reflect on and explain their thinking, their students’ learning, and their teaching strategies, and where MAT students actually get to observe and learn with and from 7th and 9th grade students.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Summer Only
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EDUC 352 - Ethnography at School
This course will use the lens of ethnography to examine the process by which social inequality related to race, class, gender and nation becomes manifest in classrooms and schools. Conversely, we will use the space of schooling to better understand the basic practice of ethnography as one tool for making meaning of social dynamics. To achieve this, we will critically examine several modern and classic school-based ethnographies to better understand the ways that social inequality is constructed and challenged in schools. These analyses will be contrasted with students’ own critical interrogation of their own schooling experiences. Further, students will become situated in local urban classrooms to employ the tools of ethnography in support of teacher action research projects. Thus, in addition to a critical examination of inequality in schooling, this course will provide students with methodological training in the construction of ethnographic field notes and ethnographic interviewing. Such analytical training is valuable not only for students interested in qualitative research, but also for anyone interested in working in schools and seeking to better understand the ways that culture is dynamically negotiated in social groupings.
Prerequisites: None
Corequisites: None
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall
Placement Guidelines
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EDUC 354 - Curriculum and Knowing: History
The essential work of any historian or social scientist, whether a professional researcher or a kindergartener, is to carefully examine different documents and evidence to develop conclusions from them. Whether examining photos and maps in a first grade classroom or preparing students for a document based question on an advanced placement test, there is a similar process to engaging in this work. This Institute will explore different ways that teachers can help develop these skills in youthful historians. This Institute will take a workshop approach and offer hands-on activities and strategies for helping students to engage in the work that historians do. Throughout the course of the institute, we will look at how to integrate historical fiction, performance projects and off-site field experiences into the curriculum. Models at the elementary and secondary level will be offered while participants will begin to develop their own units in their respective content areas. Participants will share their experiences and results of implementing this process with students in the fall.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Summer
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EDUC 355 - Curriculum and Knowing: Humanities
Participants in this week-long summer institute will read, discuss, and respond to literature written for adults, adolescents and children, with a focus on thematic connections and author’s craft. Through a range of active engagements with literature, readings of professional articles, reflective, responsive, and creative writing, we will read and discuss text sets organized by author, genre and theme. Past participants in the Humanities Institute will share their strategies for using diverse modes of responding to literature in classrooms at the elementary, middle, and secondary levels. Participants will complete literature-based curriculum units in their own classrooms in the fall and reconvene in October to share their work.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Summer
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EDUC 357 - Curriculum and Knowing: Math
One of the most important goals in any math classroom is to create confident problem solvers who are college-ready. Have fun making math come alive with us as we explore, discuss, and write about the way we understand concepts found in the Common Core Practice and Content Standards that challenge the learners in our classrooms. A large part of helping students make sense of mathematics is knowing where they’re coming from and where they are going, so we’ll work as a team both to experience and create interactive lessons across grade levels K-12 that both support and extend the thinking of ALL of our students. Experiment with geometry, algebra, number sense, and more, and discover and create valuable manipulatives, resources, and activity ideas to take back to your own classrooms. Prepare to experience “a-ha” moments of your own, which will rejuvenate your excitement about math! Participating teachers will prepare a unit plan to use with their students. At a follow-up presentation in late fall, teachers will share their unit and student work.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Summer
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EDUC 359 - Teaching and Learning, Part II
Challenges the theory that there is one best way of understanding that students must learn according to that one way, and that their capacity to learn ought to be judged accordingly. Explores many adequate pathways for developing knowledge and emphasizes that teachers who acknowledge and support different pathways help make learning more accessible for students. This premise and its implications for teaching, curriculum, assessment, the formation of learning communities for diverse groups of students, and the role of the teacher in enabling students to actively construct knowledge are explored.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every Fall.
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EDUC 361 - Human Development and Learning
Introduces students to central and evolving understandings of human development and their implications for learning and pre-K through 12 schooling. Particular emphasis will be given to cognitive and sociocultural theories of learning and development.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 362 - Teaching and Learning, Part III
Challenges the theory that there is one best way of understanding that students must learn according to that one way, and that their capacity to learn ought to be judged accordingly. Explores many adequate pathways for developing knowledge and emphasizes that teachers who acknowledge and support different pathways help make learning more accessible for students. This premise and its implications for teaching, curriculum, assessment, the formation of learning communities for diverse groups of students, and the role of the teacher in enabling students to actively construct knowledge are explored.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every Spring
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EDUC 364 - Knowledge, Development and Instruction
This is an advanced seminar that combines an in-depth examination of research in cognitive development and the learning sciences, with classroom-based research in a public school setting (focusing on learning progressions of key concepts in math, science, and classroom discourse).
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically
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EDUC 367 - Clinical Experience I (Elementary)
This course integrates at least 200 hours of focused field work with group professional development activities such as “rounds” and seminar discussion. Students will be mentored by education faculty and/or professonal development school teachers as they broaden and deepen their understanding of particular approaches to curriculum (consistent with local, state and national curriculum frameworks) and develop expertise in teaching practices (e.g., fostering and assessing literacy development) that engage groups of children, including children with special needs, in active and developmentally appropriate learning. This experience promotes students’ capacity to build and participate in a professional learning community reflecting on teaching, children’s learning, schooling and education
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 370 - Teaching for Powerful Learning
This course aims to develop understanding of powerful learning and the teaching practice that supports it. The course is conducted as a reflective and inquiring community of practice. Course members study, share, develop, reflect on, and inquire into teaching and learning that transforms classrooms into powerful thinking and learning communities which engage all students in developing their full academic and personal capabilities.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Bi-annually
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EDUC 371 - Inquiry for Powerful Learning
This course is designed for teachers from grades 4-12 who have already taken EDUC 370 Teaching for Powerful Learning or who have instructor permission because of prior experience. This follow-up course not only continues the practice-focused learning of EDUC 370, it adds a more focused inquiry dimension, engaging teachers in investigating their own practice in the light of student experience and learning. May be repeatable for credit.
Prerequisites: EDUC 370 or Instructor permission
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 376 - Powerful Learning through Teacher Research
EDUC 376: Powerful Learning Through Teacher Research is a graduate seminar that will provide professional development, support, and a collegial learning community for pre-K-12 teachers. The goal is to use teacher research – to support everyone to take their teaching to the next level of excellence, and to support teachers (and by extension, their students) as powerful, transformative learners and agents of change.
Teacher research - documentation and reflection of one’s own classroom practice - is a centerpiece of this seminar. Participants will read about and practice a variety of ethnographic and discourse analytic tools and approaches for bringing their classrooms “to the table” with colleagues. Participants will document – through video taping, collecting student work, and using a variety of epistemic tools – the participation and learning that takes place in key discussions over the course of the semester. Therefore, the course will introduce participants to not only the principles and “ways of knowing” of teacher research, but also to the “tools” of data collection and analysis.
Throughout the course, we will grapple, individually and collectively, with several key questions, including
- What does it mean to be a teacher researcher? How do teachers research their practice? What can be learned or known from researching our practice?
- What does it mean to understand teacher research as a “way of knowing”?
- What is the relationship between classroom research and teaching practice? What is the relationship between knowledge and practice? What is the role of “theory” in the work of teachers?
- What does teacher research have to contribute to our understanding of teaching and learning?
Teachers from all grade levels, K-12 and the university, and all subject areas - will work together on equal footing. Together, we will use the tools of ethnographic and discourse analytic research to ask and answer our own questions, and generate new knowledge for the field, working toward presentations of our work for other educators involved in urban education, both locally and nationally.
May be repeated one time for credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 380 - Teaching English Language Learners
This course focuses on the theoretical perspectives, research and pedagogical practices involving English Language Learners. The course is designed for MAT candidates and undergraduates who are interested in exploring the practices and approaches for supporting language and literacy development of English language learners, the conceptual frameworks and research out of which the practices have evolved, and the applications of the principles of Sheltered English Immersion.
Prerequisites: Complexities of Urban Education
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually each semester
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EDUC 381 - Critical Pedagogies
Critical Pedagogies frames a critique of the role of education as a means for reproducing social inequalities and presents a radical alternative of education for liberation and social change. It seeks to bridge theory with action – enacting a social justice agenda in one’s work with others. In this course, we will think deeply about various anti-oppressive pedagogies – critical, feminist, queer and critical race – while also practicing together our learning using these different pedagogies. We will attempt to learn by doing and modeling as much as by reading and listening. As well, this is a course in which you will actively engage with action, working collaboratively on education projects designed for social transformation in and beyond the local community.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically
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EDUC 383 - Ways of Knowing in History (Elementary)
This Way of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in History, critical content, questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 385 - Ways of Knowing in History (Secondary)
This Ways of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in History, critical content questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 386 - Ways of Knowing in the Physical and Natural Sciences (Elementary, Middle/Secondary)
Basing our approach on the way scientists themselves learn about nature, this course explores science learning through experiment and theory. Our students are often simultaneously cast as both learner and teacher, in which roles they investigate a variety of science curricula and experience different classroom learning environments. Through discussions, readings and hands-on science lessons, they confront science content, science pedagogy, and the real-world constraints of state curriculum frameworks, professional standards and high-stakes testing. Observations in Worcester Public School classrooms provide a rich resource for testing the ideas against the everyday realities.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 387 - Ways of Knowing in Mathematics (Elementary, Middle/Secondary)
This Way of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in Mathematics, critical content questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 388 - Practicum: Elementary Teaching/Learning
Involves at least 300 hours of teaching/learning experience at a professional-development school. Students will be supervised by education and/or partner school teachers.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EDUC 389 - Ways of Knowing in the Humanities (Secondary)
This Ways of Knowing course is designed to support the development of pedagogy and assessment practices aligned with the distinctive habits of learning in the Humanities, critical content questions, core curriculum standards, and the academic needs of students.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EDUC 399 - Directed Readings — Graduate
Independent critical analysis of literature related to individual research. Offered for variable credit.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered every year
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EN 101 - Environmental Science and Policy: Introductory Case Studies
This course explores the complexities of environmental science and policy through exploration and analysis of three clusters of topics: 1) Climate change and energy 2) Environmental impacts of modern agriculture and food systems; and 3) Urban and marine waste challenges and management options. This course is highly interdisciplinary and deals with many deeply controversial topics at the nexus of environmental science and policy. These include nuclear energy, GMOs, organic agriculture, vegetarian verses meat eating, and the dependency of modern lifestyles on plastics. As such, it deals with a diverse array of knowledge and perspectives from both the natural and social sciences, in addition to examining the complexities of environmental policy making from the perspective of various stakeholders such as scientists, government officials, industry and civil society. Frequent film screenings and class discussions are also a key means by which students will acquire knowledge and share views in this course.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annual -Spring/Fall
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EN 120 - Discovering Environmental Science
Covers key scientific and technical topics and emphasizes quantitative skills of problem solving. Topic areas include: mass and energy transfer; environmental chemistry: mathematics of growth; risk assessment; water pollution; and air pollution. The course aims to provide a solid foundation in important scientific aspects of environmental problems, complementing policy-oriented courses. Above all the course is designed to make students literate and comfortable with the language used to describe and analyze physicochemical processes. Study journals and homework problems are used to encourage literacy. Math skills emphasized.
Course Designation/Attribute: FA
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually - Spring
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EN 177 - Health and the Urban Environment
One of the next frontiers in environmentalism is the urban environment and the ways that the social, physical, and built environments can influence human health. This course explores that frontier, looking at risks that the built environment can pose to human health; roles that science can play in assessing these risks; and challenges of that approach. We will also look at urbanization and early public health movements; current trends in globalization and urban growth; susceptible populations and disparities in urban health; the health effects of urban sprawl; social capital and other aspects of the urban environment that can be health promoting; food and the urban footprint.
Course Designation/Attribute: GP
Anticipated Terms Offered: -
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EN 207 - Climate Change, Energy and Development
This course explores the challenges associated with climate change, energy and development from multiple perspectives, disciplines and scales. The course explores the evolving science of climate change, the uneven distribution of climate change impacts throughout the world, the challenges of integrating science into effective climate policy, energy technology innovation, technologies and policies for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation, and the associated conflicts between and diversity among challenges of developed and developing countries. This course is designed for graduate students and advanced undergraduates.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Fall or Spring
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EN 217 - Place-Based Ecological Knowledge
The complex challenges of the 21st century require transdisciplinary collaborations that integrate different ways of knowing our environment. This course explores the diverse knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples and others who live in close relation to land, such as smallholder farmers, herders, hunters, fishers, and gatherers. We begin by examining theories of ecological knowledge developed by anthropologists, human ecologists, and ethnobiologists, including the work of Indigenous scholars. Next, we demonstrate research methods used to engage place-based ecological knowledge, focusing on participatory research in which communities are involved in research design, data collection, interpretation and validation. In the last part of the course, we will consider how place-based and scientific ecological knowledge can work together to address ecological challenges, including wildlife management, food production, and adaptation to climate change. Graduate students taking the course will work in teams to conduct research in local communities, develop a short publication to be shared with community partners, and present their findings to the class.
Prerequisites: Juniors & Seniors Only
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually- Spring
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EN 241 - Environmental Toxicology
Focuses on the assessment of hazardous properties of toxic chemicals in the environment and on development of public-health policy. Covers the principles of absorption, distribution, excretion, and toxic action of chemicals on humans; animal testing; and human epidemiology. Also covers assessment of public-health risks on the basis of animal and human test results, development of standards for air and water contaminants, and uncertainty in regulating hazardous chemicals.
Prerequisites: One semester of organic chemistry or permission of the instructor.
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EN 242 - Sustainable Development Assessment and Planning
We confront one of the most pressing issues of our time: How can society transition to more sustainable development (SD)? Specifically: How can diverse social groups work in concert to vision a sustainable future, assess existing development, compare the impacts - economic, social, political, cultural and ecological - of alternative development pathways, and move towards more sustainable development? Our responses to SD challenges/opportunities require a synthesis of social and technical approaches in ways rarely seen: a) a dialogue-enabled multi-stakeholder assessment and planning process at the core; b) integrative information/communication and education technologies; c) multi-issue/multi-sector integration models (e.g. water * health * energy * food etc.); and d) ways to navigate inherent complexity, including the political context and the mitigation of corruption. The goal of the class is: to help students think about, design and consider the deployment of 2nd generation sustainable development projects. Case studies are used extensively for discussions, and simulations provide practice and insight. The course includes a major SDA&P Team Project Practicum based on either a domestic development case study or an international one (previous cases include the Cape Cod Wind Farm, the Three Gorges Dam in China, a mining project slated for Indonesia). Students work in their SDA&P Team to do three things: a) critically analyze how positive and negative impacts have been estimated (on what basis), also considering their spatial distribution; b) articulate the socio-economic, political, cultural and ecological contexts of the proposal, incl. the power dynamics; and c) design an improved socio-technical SDA&P process.
Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually
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EN 245 - Natural Resource Management
Is natural resource management about managing resources or managing people? In this course, students will examine contemporary topics and approaches in natural resource management including decentralization, governance, and community-based resource management both in theory and in practice. Through an examination of a range of natural resource management projects (i.e., land, climate change & REDD, forestry and protected area management, water and irrigation), students will consider the cultural politics of resource management, examine various stakeholder agendas, and assess the outcomes of a range of projects implemented around the world.
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