Environmental Awareness Curriculum

For more than fifteen years, the core curriculum of UNE's College of Arts and Sciences has included Environmental Awareness as its First Year Theme.

All students, regardless of major, are required to take a three-credit course entitled Introduction to Environmental Issues. The course examines the relationships of humans to their environment from historical, economic, scientific, aesthetic, and ethical perspectives and emphasizes that humans are part of ecosystems with interdependent cycles that involve other organisms, air, water, chemicals, and energy.

A required first year four-credit laboratory science course, also part of the College of Arts and Sciences core curriculum, introduces students to the scientific method through significant consideration of environmental issues.

The College has also shown its commitment to teaching environmental stewardship through supporting a full-fledged Environmental Studies Department with five tenure track faculty positions, majors in environmental science and environmental studies, a minor in geographic information systems, and the Green Learning Community, an innovative first-year learning experience, which integrates courses in biology, environmental issues, and literature and/or economics to address real-world environmental issues from interdisciplinary perspectives.