Taught By:
Kwame Owusu-Daaku
Associate Professor
Earth and Environmental Sciences Department
The University of West Florida
Read profile here.
Motivation to Teach Social Action:
The emphasis on social action - that students get to enact change in real time (over the course of a semester)
Course Description:
Course 1 Description: What does policy have to do with environmental science? What about politics? Why should I care about either as an environmental scientist? This course examines the role of science in the environmental policy-making process - both locally and internationally. It investigates the methods scientists use to learn about the natural world; the way scientific knowledge accumulates and disseminates; the treatment of science by advocates, dissenters, and the media; the role of science in decision making about environmental issues, and how environmental scientists can become better communicators.
Course 2 Description: What is systems thinking? What is interdisciplinary research? What do these two concepts have to do with each other? Why should I even care about any of these issues? Problems that generate research questions are often complex and multifaceted. Often no single solution can adequately address any one problem. By extension no single discipline holds the answer to any research question. In order to solve some of the intractable problems of our time such as addiction, human-induced climate change, and prejudice; as people with opportunity and/or privilege we need to understand and practice the skill of thinking in interconnected, interdependent, and interdisciplinary ways (i.e. systems thinking).
