Wellesley College
ER-12: Sustainability Immersive Experience

BISC 308 Tropical Ecology: During the fall, students are introduced to tropical rain forests and coral reefs in lectures in preparation for the laboratory part of the course during January. The class travels to a small island bordering the world's second longest barrier reef off the coast of Belize. In the second half of the field course they visit an intact lowland rain forest in Costa Rica. Laboratory work is carried out primarily outdoors and includes implementation of research projects designed during the fall. The class focuses on ecosystems endangered by human activities and a changing climate. Students live and interact closely with the caretakers and researchers of these locations.

ES 212 Lake Baikal The Soul of Siberia: The ecological and cultural values of Lake Baikal – the oldest, deepest, and most biotically rich lake on the planet – are examined in lectures and discussion in the spring. Students then attend a three-week field laboratory taught at Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia in August. Lectures address the fundamentals of aquatic ecology and the role of Lake Baikal in Russian literature, history, art, music, and the country’s environmental movement. Laboratory work is conducted primarily outdoors and includes introductions to the flora and fauna, field tests of student-generated hypotheses, meetings with the lake’s stakeholders, and tours of ecological and cultural sites surrounding the lake.

ES 101 This course allows students to xxplore the campus and surrounding area in an interdisciplinary manner. Topics include the movement of materials through the environment, ecosystem analysis, principles of resource management, and pollution control. Students investigate actual environmental problems and work toward solutions using skills such as computer modeling, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, and spatial data analysis using GIS. Field work often requires trips to different ecosystems near the College.

BISC 201 This ecology course places an emphasis on experimental ecology and its uses in addressing environmental issues such as biological control of pests, conservation of endangered species and global climate change. Laboratories occur primarily in the field where students explore and study local habitats, including meadows, forests, alpine tundra, bogs, dunes, marshes, lakes, and streams.

ES/GEOS 201 This course deals with inherently multidisciplinary problems in environmental science, and offers a diverse skill set in order to begin to analyze and solve these problems. This course will focus on developing a toolbox of skills including field methods, geochemical analysis (natural waters, soils and other environmental materials), and modeling with a goal of being able to frame and solve environmental problems. Students will conduct semester-long research projects and will present their results in a final poster session.

ES 203 This course explores the mainstream environmental movement and other formulations of environmentalism, such as environmental justice, deep ecology, animal rights, and indigenous peoples’ concerns for the environment. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to examining the role of culture in shaping how people have valued the environment and organized to protect it. The goal of this course is to consider how environmental activism and decision-making can and must be sensitive to cultural context. As part of the course, students are required to volunteer several times with a local environmental organization and then present an analysis of the organization.

Lake Baikal class: http://www.wellesley.edu/Russian/Baikal/baikal.html