Are you puzzled by the search for just the right environmental course? Here is your spot for one-stop shopping for environmentally-related courses. You will find courses from many departments and at all levels to help build your environmental concentration, or to add an environmental focus to your program. Come back often. This list will evolve as new courses are added.

Phil Brown, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies. He has been involved in CES for many years, advised undergraduate and graduates, and co-taught the Environmental Justice course. He works on environmental health issues, including disputes on environmental causation, citizen involvement in disease and exposure discovery, citizen-science alliances to study environmental health, and toxics reduction. Currently he is doing much work on biomonitoring and household exposure studies, including ethical issues of reporting back personal data to participants.

He also works on the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology, and on health social movements.  In other environmental and related efforts on campus, Phil Brown is part of the Superfund Basic Research Program and its associated Center for Environmental Health and Technology. He is part of the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation and of the Committee on Science and Technology Studies.

Sriniketh Nagavarapu's research interests involve the role that labor market choices play in environmental issues, primarily in developing countries. Currently, he is working to understand the consequences of a potential ethanol expansion on regional land use patterns and deforestation in Brazil; these consequences depend intimately on not only the decisions of sugarcane producers, but also the movement of workers across regions and between sectors.

More broadly, Sri is interested in the interactions between traditional environmental concerns - such as land conservation,water supply, and adoption of green technology - and issues related to labor markets. In addition to this primary set of interests, Sri also enjoys examining the design and implementation of government transfer programs in developing countries and the US. For example, he has participated in research on individual schooling decisions during times of crisis and food assistance for low-income families in the U.S. and India. After growing up in Torrance, California, Sri graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics in 2002 and will complete his Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford in 2008.

Fall ’08: ENVS 1350 – Environmental Economics and Policy
Economic analysis of environmental problems. Introduction and application of key concepts including market failure, externalities, economic incentives, and alternative forms of environmental regulation; problems of valuation-the value of life, biodiversity, equity and efficiency; risk assessment; application to topics including fishery depletion, deforestation, population growth and food supply, energy systems and global climate change, world trade and the environment; institutions for sustainable development. Prerequisite: ECON 1110.

Gregory Howard is a postdoctoral researcher in Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health, having recently completed his doctorate in the same department. He works with the C8 Science Panel on a large-scale epidemiologic study of exposure to perfluorinated compounds via drinking water in the Ohio River Valley. His dissertation work focused on toxicologic and epidemiologic methods for assessing and predicting interactions -- additive, synergistic, or antagonistic -- between toxic exposures. In recent years, Greg has taught a class on urban design and public health at BU SPH, and continues to work with the Research Translation Core at the Boston University Superfund Basic Research Program in developing new tools for communication of research results to diverse stakeholders and for outreach to communities. Before getting into environmental health, Greg studied astronomy and physics at Yale and the University of Wisconsin, and worked as a bike activist in San Francisco.

Course taught Fall ‘08: ENVS 1710 - Environmental Health and Policy

This course will provide an overview of environmental health methods and their application to policy and regulation. Students will learn the basic tools of the environmental health sciences, including toxicology, epidemiology, and risk assessment; the framework of major environmental health regulation in the United States; and the scientific basis for the regulatory process and for specific regulatory decisions. Traditional environmental health concerns (air pollution, water pollution, and waste management) will be discussed, as well as problems of more recent origin, including urban design, climate change, and ubiquitous exposure to low-level pollutants. Case studies will be used throughout the course to illustrate the progress of environmental health science, the policies and regulations that result, and the success or failure of those policies in protecting public health and the environment. Finally, while the problems of health disparities and environmental injustice will be treated specifically in lecture, they will also be addressed as themes throughout the course, by considering the inequities and disparities associated with each exposure and policy discussed. Prerequisite: ENVS 0110 or permission of the instructor. Sections to be arranged based on TA's class schedule.