How do we perceive, react to, and work together to solve the global crises facing us? This cluster proposes a broad approach to understanding the ways that overlapping crises affect society, as well as individuals, and explores ways we might begin to address them. Focusing on climate change, food security, and loneliness, the cluster takes up widespread environmental problems that currently challenge our ability to see the way forward. Students will be exposed to new technologies and approaches, and will consider and evaluate how various perspectives may offer a path to a sustainable future.
This cluster will be offered throughout 2022-24.
Instructor: Stephanie Yarwood
What will the farm of the future look like? Our current food system is plagued with paradoxes. An estimated 41.2 million Americans are classified as food insecure, but we produce 4,000 calories per person per day. Between 2008 and 2012, 1.6 million acres of long-term grasslands were converted to crop production, yet more than 350,000 acres of farmland were lost to development annually. This course will investigate what determines the food we eat and how we can make changes today that will improve both food access and the environment for future generations. Students will learn agribusiness, as well as alternative food movements and regenerative agriculture. They will meet experts from the USDA and Maryland producers. By growing their own vegetables, tracking food consumption, and exploring family history linked to farming, students will leave the course as conscious consumers empowered to navigate food system reform.
GenEd: SCIS, DSSP
Offered In: Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
Required/Optional: Required
Instructor: Marisa Franco
In 2017, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy deemed loneliness an “epidemic.” Despite the rise of social media that is meant to foster connection, over 23% of adults report being lonely and social networks have been shrinking for decades. Like a viral epidemic, widespread loneliness has grave consequences. Loneliness shortens lifespans at a rate akin to smoking 15 cigarettes a day and predicts mortality risk better than poor diet or lack of exercise. This course will explore how loneliness became a crisis—exploring potential drivers of loneliness like social media, systemic racism, homophobia, and the rise of romantic love—and what we can do about it. It will end with students developing interventions to diminish loneliness and practicing skills to connect with one another.
GenEd: DSHS, DVUP
Offered In: Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Dana Fisher
How do we study environmental problems? The course provides an overview of the ways social scientists collect information about environmental issues and environmental change, most of which are driven by society and the social world. The course focuses on learning how to collect data that are reliable and applicable to research questions. Through the lens of specific case studies of environmental efforts currently underway, students will learn how to construct a testable hypothesis, design a small-scale research project, and write up the findings of this work to understand environmental issues. They will develop a critical eye to the structure of social science research: identifying the object of inquiry, noting what is being tested; how it is operationalized; and evaluating the quality of the research conducted. The course requires no background or prerequisites.
GenEd: DSHS
Offered In: Fall 2022, Spring 2023
Required/Optional: Optional
Instructor: Eni Baballari
Canada, Maui, eastern Libya. We are witnessing the burning and flooding of our planet. A major influence on these catastrophes are the greenhouse gasses presently trapping too much heat close to earth and warming it beyond acceptable limits. Our survival depends on reversing this trend. But how? An answer lies just beneath our feet. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the top 30 cm of the world’s soil contains about twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere and more than is stored in all the vegetation on earth. Soil turns out to be a great way to keep carbon out of the atmosphere. This course explores the critical role soils play not just in our food production, but also in our efforts to prevent the worst effects of climate change. With their knowledge of the drivers of climate change and soil characteristics, students in this course will research and propose more sustainable soil management practices to help mitigate climate change and save the world.
GenEd: –
Offered In: Spring 2024
Required/Optional: Optional
