MPA in Environmental Science and Policy

ENVP U6111 Principles of Ecology. 2 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Summer 2017 Course Dates: June 2 - July 7

This course facilitates learning about 1) basic principles related to ecological interactions of life on earth and 2) the causes and consequence of changes in biological diversity. For the first portion of this course, we will focus on how organisms interact with one another and with the non-living environment. For the second portion of this course, we will study the effects of biodiversity at the genetic, population, community, and landscape levels. This course aims to give students an understanding of the ways in which biology can contribute to the solution of environmental problems facing human society and to contribute biological perspectives to an interdisciplinary approach to environmental problem solving.

ENVP U6112 Urban Ecology. 2 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Summer 2017 Course Dates: July 14 - Aug. 11

This course facilitates learning about how ecology can inform land use decisions and applied management strategies of natural resources (e.g. water, air, biodiversity), particularly in urban environments. Towards that end, this course covers topics ranging from applied ecology and conservation biology to sustainable development. It uses a cross disciplinary approach to understanding the nature of ecology and biological conservation, as wells as the social, philosophical and economic dimensions of land use strategies. The course will focus on applications and problem-solving in issues related to urban development. The course will give particular attention to developing skills using geographic information systems (GIS). Students will gain a basic, practical understanding of GIS applications using ArcView GIS 9.3.

ENVP U6115 Climatology. 2 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Summer 2017 Course Dates: June 6 - July 11

Students learn how the atmosphere, oceans, and freshwater systems interact to affect climate. Causes of greenhouse warming, energy production and alternatives are studied. A local case study focuses on planning for climate changes on interannual, decadal, and centennial time scales. A goal of the course is to teach an appreciation of uncertainties and predictability in earth systems. A particular emphasis will be placed on the role of humans, in the last centuries, on the perturbation of the natural climate and how these perturbations can be characterized and discerned from natural fluctuations. Other concepts examined include an integrated view of the Earth's energy budget, structure and circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean, interaction between oceans and atmosphere.

ENVP U6116 Hydrology. 2 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Summer 2017 Course Dates: July 18 - Aug. 15

Students are introduced to the hydrologic cycle as well as processes governing water quantity and quality. Students learn how the atmosphere, oceans, and freshwater systems interact to affect the hydrological cycle and climate. This course focuses on basic physical principles (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, runoff, stream flow, percolation, and groundwater flow), as well as environmentally relevant applications based on case studies. Most specifically, students will be exposed to water quantity and issues from global to regional scales and how human and natural processes affect water availability in surface and groundwater systems.

ENVP U6220 Environmental Chemistry. 2 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Summer 2017 Course Dates: June 1 - July 6

The course teaches basic techniques for getting to know an environment and understand key chemical processes central to environmental science. Students build an understanding of the key chemical processes related to pollution generation and control. The focuses of this course are the processes that affect the fate and transport of specific compounds that act as contaminants on local- to global-scale levels. The behavior of contaminants is influenced by physical, chemical, and biological processes naturally occurring within various ecosystems. This course describes these processes and the extent to which they affect different classes of contaminants. Students learn how to analyze chemical information they will encounter as environmental managers.

ENVP U6221 Risk Assessment and Environmental Toxicology. 2 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Summer 2017 Course Dates: July 13 - Aug. 10

This course will explore the effects of different contaminants on the health of all organisms within an ecosystem, with a particular focus on human health. While toxicologists study a wide variety of toxicants, from naturally occurring poisons (venoms) to synthetic chemicals, this course will emphasize anthropogenic toxicants, in the context of how (and whether) exposure to such toxicants should be controlled: risk assessment. The main goal of this course is to foster an understanding of how environmental scientists think and solve environmental issues and most importantly to develop an expertise in assessing the validity of scientific research and its conclusions.

ENVP U6224 Environmental Data Analysis. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, Management, EPD, EPD:Sustainable

This course introduces students to statistical data analysis in the context of environmental issues. The is taught through a combination of lectures and laboratory exercises. The course encourages a rigorous examination of the many applications of statistical analysis in climate change assessment, environmental justice, land use, land cover change and measuring the impacts of natural hazards on populations.

ENVP U6225 Ethics, Values and Justice. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EPD, EPD:Sustainable
Open to PESP Students Only

The purpose of this course is to examine the claims made by multiple stakeholders for use of the environment, both natural and built, and to determine how contention among them can be ethically resolved in the policy process. Over time, six major clusters of stakeholders have arisen, expressing environmentalist standpoints: three, including proponents of wilderness, ecosystems, and nonhuman species, have been called nonanthropocentric; and three, including proponents of conservation, environmental justice, and sustainability, have been called anthropocentric. Among them a diverse array of ethical quarrels has arisen, yet today the sustainability outlook appears to be ascendant in popular and public discourse. Claims made regarding greater or lesser use of both natural and human resources continue to be debated nonetheless. Many are related to the issues of whether present use should take into account past wrongful, often inter-racially prejudicial actions, and future-regarding, often inter-generationally beneficial actions. The course aims to examine specific principles, such as polluter pays for pollution, prior free informed consent, transboundary accountability, and common responsibility, which can be used to resolve ethical issues. Consideration is given to the possibility of both collective and individual ethical action, even in situations of corruption, including subtle forms involving campaign contributions with a pay-to-play aspect. The objective is to discover how such ethical problems can be managed in the public policy process.

ENVP U6228 Corporate Sustainability and the Role of Government in Advancing Environmental & Social Performance. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EPD, EPD:Economic, EPD:Sustainable, EE, EE: ERM

Corporations embrace sustainable development to optimize environmental and social performance and corporate governance, improving competitive advantage and asset value while contributing to human wellbeing and environmental integrity. Brand value, product differentiation, cost and risk reduction and the enhancement of environmental and social conditions through a company's value chain, operations and the goods and services it sells are all hallmarks of corporate sustainability. This course profiles the history, underpinnings and elements of this rapidly evolving field, with a focus on environmental management. We take a systems approach, exploring how corporate strategy is becoming evermore grounded in an understanding of a corporation's interdependencies with the natural world and the broad array of its internal and external stakeholders. Sustainability is explored from the perspectives of multinational corporations, midsize firms and small businesses contributing to sustainable local economies. We address the role of government in forwarding this agenda, including: incentives and technical assistance to advance best practice and product development; public/private partnerships for research and demonstration; facilitating environmental markets; and green procurement. We will also address the challenges faced by governments to this end, including political opposition, potential rollback of mandates and funding for environmental and social action, and ongoing resource constraints.

ENVP U6230 Economics of Sustainable Development. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EPD, EPD:Sustainable, EE: EPM, EE

The objective of this course is to equip students with the skills necessary to critically analyze policy alternatives which further Sustainable Development. Throughout the course, students will compare competing objectives and policies through the prism of economic reasoning. Although some mathematical economic models will be discussed, the emphasis of the course will be on using economic intuition rather than mathematics. By the end of the course, students should have a firm understanding of competing views regarding what constitutes sustainability and development, and appropriate policies to get us there. In addition, they should be able to express their own views in a manner that demonstrates an understanding of general economic theory.

ENVP U6233 Environmental Finance Prep. 0 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EE, EE: EPM
Fall 2017 Course Dates: Nov. 1, 8 & 15

The course material provides a familiarity with some basic concepts in Finance, especially for students planning to take the Environmental Finance Course in the spring who do not have any background in Finance. The topics covered include: Time Value of Money and Valuation, Cost of Capital and Capital Markets, Capital Markets, Commodity Markets, Futures and Options. This course is required for students who do not have a background in Finance and plan to take the Environmental Finance Class in during the Spring semester.

ENVP U6234 Sustainability Management. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Open to MPA-ESP Students Only

The course translates academic study in organization theory, bureaucracy, and public management into practical lessons for public managers. We develop a framework for understanding and applying tools that can be used to influence organization behavior and obtain resources from the organization's environment. Memo-writing, group process and communication skills are taught through hands-on assignments. Earth system-related case studies present a set of problems for public managers to address. The focus is on state and local environmental management cases, and treatment of local land use and NIMBY (not in my backyard) issues. Cases will deal with public, private, and nonprofit environmental management, and will include U.S. and international cases. Each week students are either briefed by a group of their colleagues on a case or submit a two-page memo on the week's case.

ENVP U6235 Environmental Finance. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EE, EE: ERM, EE: EPM, EPD, EPD:Economic, EPD:Sustainable

Prerequisites: ENVP U6233. Some background in microeconomics is highly recommended.

This course covers the theory and practice of Environmental Finance. The course assumes that students have an understanding of financial; and economic concepts, especially Commodity Markets, Project Finance and Investing. The course is divided into three segments; first will cover how environmental commodity markets work and how markets can be used to regulate polluting industries. The second segment covers the financing of environmental projects. The last segment will cover investing in environmental markets, and socially responsible investing.

ENVP U6236 Origins of Environmental Law: Regulation & Evolution. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, USP, USP:Urban
Not offered during 2017-18 academic year.

This unique course will focus on the process that led to the seminal federal environmental laws of the 1970s and the political and social dynamics and setting of the era. Over the course of a single decade, Congress enacted a series of environmental laws that created the direction and character of federal environmental laws, not to mention a sea change in the relationship between the Congress, the Courts and the Executive branch.

ENVP U6239 The Politics and Policy of Urban Sustainability. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, USP, USP:Urban, EE, EE: EPM

Cities are increasingly recognized as a key level of government for environmental and sustainability policy. As at all levels, politics and policy are intensely intertwined, and perhaps moreso at the local level because the decisions involved often affect constituents directly and intimately -- in their neighborhoods, in their homes, in their commutes. This colloquium explores both the politics and the policy of sustainability in the municipal context. Covering a range of sustainability issues -- such as air quality, public health, and transportation -- it looks at the dynamics of making change happen at the local level, including variations in power among municipal governments; how issues get defined and allocated; how stakeholder management takes place (or doesn't); how agencies and levels of government interfere with each other; and how best practices can (and cannot) be transferred internationally. The course is reading-intense and includes case studies by historians rather than political scientists. The focus of most readings is on the United States, but students' research projects will require looking beyond the US and transferring practices to a US city.

ENVP U6241 Earth Systems and Environmental Politics, Policy, and Management. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Summer 2017 Course Dates: May 31 - Aug. 16

This is the first social science course in the earth systems concentration. Its goal is to take a system-level approach to environmental policy problems. Issues presented include defining the environmental problem; the politics of the environment; environmental agenda setting; pollution prevention; U.S. pollution control through regulation, public works, and market incentives; cross-media and cross national environmental problems; and the response of societies, economies, and political systems to environmental issues. The course also discusses international environmental regime development, conflict resolution, and citizen participation in environmental decision-making.

ENVP U6250 Poverty, Inequality, and the Environment. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EE, EE: EPM, USP, USP:Social, EPD, EPD:Sustinable

Progress and Poverty (1879), by the American economist and philosopher Henry George, was a worldwide bestseller and major impetus to reform movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. George argued that owners of land and other natural resources--a small fraction of the population--gain most of the benefits of economic growth. They also withhold high quality resources from use, driving down wages and forcing economic activity to sprawl out onto marginal land. His remedy: "We must make land common property," not by nationalizing it, but by collecting the surplus (economic rent) by taxation, using the revenue for public benefit. See (www.schalkenbach.org/100-years-later.html.) Today, George's ideas powerfully influence both the field of ecological economics and the commons movement. (See www.onthecommons.org.) In this course we will read Progress and Poverty, examining how well George's ideas have stood the test of time. We will read excerpts from predecessors and contemporaries of George, including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen. We will also read modern authors, including economist Mason Gaffney and commons movement founder Peter Barnes. Topics we will cover include: Poverty, its definition and measurement. Inequality of wealth and income, and the relationship of inequality to poverty, wage levels, health, environmental destruction and "sustainability". Population size, age structure and geographic distribution. Economics of common resources. Economic rent and property rights. Economics of cooperation and competition. Inequality, trade and global sprawl. Growth and the boom and bust cycle. Economics of time--how do and should we make decisions about the future? Tax and other policy options.

ENVP U6275 GIS for International Studies. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EE, EE: EPM, USP, USP:Urban, USP:Social

This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive overview of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and remote sensing technologies as they are used in a variety of social and environmental science applications. Through a mixture of lectures, readings, focused discussions, and hands-on exercises, students will acquire an understanding of the variety and structure of spatial data and databases, gain a knowledge of the principles behind raster and vector based spatial analysis, learn basic cartographic principles for producing maps that effectively communicate a message, and develop sound practices for GIS project design and management. The class will focus on the application of GIS to assist in the development, implementation and analysis of environmental and social policy and practices at the global and regional scale.

ENVP U6310 Research Methods and Quantitative Techniques in Public Management and Policy. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Open to MPA-ESP Students Only

This course is about social science research methods, with a heavy focus on quantitative techniques. Students in this course will learn to formulate research and policy questions amenable to empirical inquiry, and to identify and apply appropriate methods of measurement and analysis to answer these questions. This course begins with the discussion on the formulation of research questions derived from policy and management objectives, followed by the collection and organization of data, and finally the presentation and analysis of facts. This course emphasizes the conceptual understanding of statistics that can be readily applied in the practice of public management and policy. In terms of statistical methods, the course covers descriptive statistics for univariate and bivariate analysis, such as concepts and measures of central tendency, dispersion and contingency tables, and inferential statistical techniques including chi square, difference in means, and simple and multiple regression analysis.

ENVP U6320 Political Context of Public/Private Environmental Management. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EE, EE: EPM, EE: ERM

This class explores how the political system identifies public issues as problems requiring public action, and creates and implements policy solutions. It assesses what conditions foster change by anticipating likely outcomes and effective points of intervention to achieve policy goals. The course emphasizes the politics of environmental policymaking, using agriculture as a case study because it is a global enterprise with local to global scales of inquiry. We will explore the tension between the market and economic models and politics and political models of policymaking; interests and interest-group politics; the connections among expertise, knowledge, and policymaking; and the particular politics of policy issues that cross jurisdictional boundaries, including federalism and globalization.

ENVP U6400 Financing the Green Economy: Markets, Business, & Politics. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP, EPD, EPD:Economic, EPD:Sustainable

"Financing the Green Economy" will focus on the challenges of developing and financing clean energy technologies from an individual firm level so that students - whether as citizens or in their careers - can help overcome them. The course will emphasize the financial aspects of green energy, but in doing so, will bring together many of the other factors that affect whether and how much the green economy takes hold.

ENVP U8201 Financial Management. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Open to MPA-ESP Students Only

The course provides an introduction to budgeting and financial control as a means of influencing the behavior of public organizations. Concepts include the budget process and taxation, intergovernmental revenues, municipal finance, bonds, control of expenditures, purchasing, debt management, productivity enhancement, and nonprofit finance. Students learn about the fiscal problems that managers typically face, and how they seek to address them. Students also gain experience in conducting financial analysis and facility with spreadsheet programs. Case materials utilize earth systems issues as well as other policy issues. A computer lab section is an essential aspect of the course, as it teaches students to use spreadsheet software to perform practical exercises regarding the budgeting and financial management of a hypothetical state environmental agency.

ENVP U8213 Economics of Enrivonmental Policy I. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Open to MPA-ESP Students Only

This two-semester course shows students that it is both possible and useful to think about public policy rigorously to see what assumptions work; to understand how formal models operate; to question vagueness and clichés; and to make sophisticated ethical arguments. An important goal of the class is to have students work in groups to apply microeconomic concepts to current public policy issues having to do with urban environmental and earth systems. The course includes problem sets designed to teach core concepts and their application. In the spring semester, the emphasis is on the application of concepts to analyze contemporary policy problems. Some time is also devoted to international trade and regulation, and industrial organization issues. Students not only learn microeconomic concepts, but also how to explain them to decision-makers. Student groups take on specific earth system policy issues, analyze options through the use of microeconomic concepts, and then make oral presentations to the class.

ENVP U8216 Economics of Enrivonmental Policy II. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Open to MPA-ESP Students Only

This is a core economics course for the MPA in Environmental Science and Policy. The course explores the use of the tools of economic analysis in the discussion and evaluation of environmental policies. It builds on the microeconomic framework developed in Microeconomics and Policy Analysis I and extends it in a few directions. First, we deepen the discussion of theoretical issues particularly relevant for the analysis of environmental policies, such as externalities and public goods. Second, we explore how the theoretical concepts covered can be measured and used in actual environmental policy, and discuss real world examples of such applications. And finally, we discuss some aggregate implications related to – and the available evidence on – the two-way relationship between natural resources and economic growth. The objective of the course is to provide students with the necessary background for an understanding of the logic underlying the economic perspective on environmental policies. This is important to develop the skills necessary to conceptualize the trade-offs implicit in such policy decisions and to give a glimpse of the tools available to evaluate such trade-offs. As a result, it also helps build knowledge useful in a critical reading of policy proposals and evaluations in the environmental field.

ENVP U9230 Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Management II. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Open to MPA-ESP Students Only

In the summer and autumn semesters, the Workshop emphasizes management issues. Students enroll in small, faculty-advised project teams and design a detailed operational plan for addressing an important public policy problem. Each Workshop faculty member selects a piece of proposed but not yet enacted state, federal, or local environmental law (or a U.N. resolution) and students are asked to develop a plan for implementing and managing the new program. In the summer semester, the Workshop groups write reports explaining the environmental science aspects of a management problem to political decision-makers who are not scientists. During the autumn semester the Workshop completes the operational plan for implementing the program. Both the summer and autumn Workshop projects will be on issues central to the two earth systems problem themes that the cohort will focus on throughout their course of study.

ENVP U9232 Workshop in Applied Earth Systems Policy Analysis. 5 Points.

Category: MPA-ESP
Open to MPA-ESP Students Only

In the spring semester, new groups are formed to undertake analytic projects for real-world clients in government and nonprofit agencies. These teams, working under the supervision of faculty members, write a report analyzing an actual environmental policy or management problem faced by their clients. Again, projects selected will be relevant to the cohort's two earth systems problem themes.

PUAF U6260 Management Training for Development Professionals. 3 Points.

Category: MPA-DP, Management
Open to 2nd year MPA-DP students only

This course focuses on practical skills relevant to the roles and job responsibilities of development practitioners - whether they work for multilateral organizations, government agencies, private sector firms, NGOs, or social ventures - that will be useful whether they are based in the head office or in field locations.   The course is designed to build knowledge and skills that match the complex, interdisciplinary reality of development management.  Successful development practice depends on the capacity of program and project managers to integrate different disciplines and interact effectively with numerous stakeholders, both inside and outside their own organization.  This capacity is likely to become more important, and more highly valued, as the global development ecosystem continues to evolve.    The course blends training in both “hard skills” and “soft skills” that are relevant to the demands of project management in complex, dynamic environments. The course is divided into three modules, and features practice with relevant planning and management tools, problem-solving exercises, and presentations by student teams.