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Courses I Teach or Have Taught in the Past

A full list of the courses I have taught since 1979 is available here.

Currently, I teach a set of courses in the Sustainability and Conservation Leadership (SCL) program at MARI at ODU and also a course on natural hazards and the disaster that may result from these hazards.

  • IDS/BIOL/OEAS 466W, BIOL/OEAS 566: Mitigation and Adaptation Studies; three credits.

    In this course, students are introduced to studies focusing on mitigation of human-induced changes in the Earth system, including but not limited to climate change and sea level rise, and adaptation to the impacts of these changes. A particular focus is on the challenges climate change and sea level rise pose to conservation efforts. The course covers the hazards resulting from the on-going planetary reengineering that is pushing the planet out of the Holocene; the vulnerability of the coupled socio-ecological and economic system to these hazards, the foresight we have in terms of future trajectories of the planet and the probability density functions of the hazards; the opportunities and limitations for mitigation and adaptation that result from societal decision making processes and the general basis of human decision making; and, finally, the options we have for mitigation and adaptation and a framework for the assessment of the viability of proposed options. Most of the examples used in the course to illustrate the issues are taken from practical work in conservation.

  • BIOL/IDS/OEAS 467, BIOL/OEAS 567: Sustainability Leadership; three credits.

    Creating a more sustainable society presents a serious challenge and at the same time an enormous opportunity. In this class, students discover what makes a leader for sustainability. They consider a range of global and local crises from a leadership point of view in the context of sustainability science, which addresses the development of communities in a rapidly changing social, economic, and environmental system-of-systems environment. The course takes a problem-motivated and solution-focused approach to the wicked problems considered. This class is a service learning class that includes a case study with fieldwork carried out by the class in Florida.

  • OEAS 658: Participatory and Agent-Based Modeling, Simulations, and Visualization; three credits.

    The course takes a transdisciplinary approach to real-world wicked problems and goes through the full process of participatory modeling, development of stock and flow models and/or agent-based models, taking a scenario-based approach to the exploring of the full spectrum of possible futures, and using visualizations of simulation results to inform potentual stakeholders and make recommendations.

  • IDS 369/CL 668: Internships in Conservation Leadership; three credits.

    The intership mandates 300 hours at the host institution. Each internship focused on a wicked problem associated with a "real-world issue" that constituted a leadership challenge in conservation and adaptation. The student are expected to use the concepts of adaptation science to analyse the issue and to develop options of how to address the issue. Each student is being mentored and has a dedicated supervisor at the host institution.

  • OEAS 250N: Natural Hazards and Disasters; four credits (including a lab).

    The course and the lab introduce some of Earth's natural phenomena that can, and often do, result in major loss of life or catastrophic damage to property. These phenomena are considered in their relevance to major national and international efforts to manage and reduce disaster risk and increase societal sustainability. Students in the course and lab develop and enhance their research, analysis, critical thinking, and writing skills. The course and lab are suitable for first and second year undergraduate students considering a career in science, teaching, and governance, or who are just interested to know more about the planet on which they live.