“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted upon the land is quite invisible to laymen…in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.” Aldo Leopold

Listed on this page are the descriptions of the minor core and approved humanities, social science, and natural science courses for those students in the IPE minor. Ad hoc electives are those that may be approved on a case-by-case basis.

CORE COURSES

• IPE 1013 - Consumption and the Environment. An introduction to the interdisciplinary aspects of human consumption and the environment. Aspects of the production and consumption of food, energy, transportation, and housing are considered for their contributions to global climate change, air and water pollution, and habitat alteration, as well as other relevant topics regarding the environment. Students will learn how complex interactions between natural processes and human activities shape aspects of the global, regional, and local environment. [III-SS]
• IPE 4003 - Practicum on Environmental Issues. Students work in small groups on an environmental problem facing central Oklahoma. A variety of skills and concepts will be applied to cooperatively propose a solution that incorporates the perspectives of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.

HUMANITIES COURSES

• HIST 3493 - American Environmental History. Examines American attitudes toward the environment since the founding of American colonies, evolution of natural resource policies, and lives of prominent figures in the conservation and ecology movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [IV-WC]
• HSCI 3473 – History of Ecology and Environmentalism. This course explores the historical development and interaction of ecology as a profession and a political stance from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. The course centers on the science of ecology, with attention paid to the political ramifications of specific ideas and how they have been incorporated into environmental debates regarding such subjects as overfishing, rainforest deforestation, population control, and the loss of biodiversity. [IV-WC]
• NAS 3113 – Native American Philosophy. This class will introduce you to Native American world
  views—different ways of looking at the world and how human cultures explain their relationship with the natural world. You should learn how different cultures have their own consistent logical systems and how to analyze them in terms of cause and effect relationships. We will compare Native American world views with the intellectual traditions of contemporary Christianity and the modern university system to determine the similarities and differences between the two. [IV-WC]
• PHIL 3293 - Environmental Ethics. Prerequisite: junior standing or permission of instructor. Surveys the field of environmental ethics. Various principles philosophers use to assign value to the natural world and assign obligations toward nature to human beings are examined by students in order to articulate and defend their own reasoned points of view on environmental questions. [IV-WC]
• ENGL 4453 – Literature and Landscape. An exploration of writers, gardeners, farmers, and painters who translated nature into art. Texts range from the ancient to the modern world, and may include classical, Renaissance, Romantic, and American works in which engagement in landscape is an important topic.
• ENGL 4723 - Issues in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Prerequisites: 1213. May be repeated with a change of subject; maximum credit six hours. Intensive study of 19th century American texts in a specific literary or historical context, such as the Civil War and Reconstruction, the women's rights movement, transcendentalism, regionalism, or sentimentalism.

SOCIAL SCIENCE COURSES

• ANTH 4103 - People and Plants. Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Examines the direct relationships between people and plants, focusing on traditional peoples of the world. Topics include paleoethnobotany, folk classification, agriculture, hallucinogens, and medicines. [III-SS]
• ANTH 4533 - Human Evolutionary History (Slashlisted with 5553). Prerequisite: 1113 and 2503 or permission of instructor. Biological anthropology course focusing on the subfield of paleoanthropology, concerned with the examination of the origins of modern Homo sapiens. Focus on evolutionary theory and processes of evolutionary change; theory and method of paleoanthropological research; primate archaeological/fossil record, emphasizing the evolution of hominoids and hominids; analysis and interpretation of fossil records; and major trends, issues, and debates in paleoanthropology. No student may earn credit for both 4553 and 5553.
• GEOG 3253 - Environmental Conservation. Contemporary environmental issues and policies. Problems of population growth, food production, energy shortages, resource depletion, and pollution impacts will be stressed. The social aspects of conservation management policies will be viewed at both global and national scales. [III-SS]
• GEOG 3563 - Geography of Natural Resources. Definition and evaluation of mineral, agricultural, forest, and water resources, including their variation over time, between cultures, and as affected by technological innovation. Emphasis is placed on the distribution, technologies, institutions, and landscapes of natural resources in modern economies.
• P SC 3233 - Environmental Policy and Administration. Prerequisite: 1113. Characterizes the evolution of public sector involvement in protection of the environment; addresses current issues associated in environmental protection including administrative efficiency and effectiveness and intergovernmental relations, and assesses potential solutions to emerging environmental problems.
• P SC 4233 - Science, Technology, and Public Policy. Prerequisite: 1113 or permission of instructor. An examination of the impact of science and technology on the American political system and the responses of the national government to the technological society. An effort is made to project the consequences of new technologies and define alternative public policy responses.

 NATURAL SCIENCE COURSES

• BOT 2404 - Ecology and Environmental Quality (Crosslisted with Zoology 2404) Prerequisite: sophomore standing. Study of ecological principles and their applications to human systems, study of population, air pollution, water pollution, energy issues, etc. Laboratory exercises focus on learning scientific methods of measurement of environmental quality factors. Laboratory component. [II-LAB]
• BOT 3453 - Principles of Plant Ecology. Prerequisite: 3534 or equivalent. Corequisite BOT 3452. Introduction to physiological, population, and community ecology. Emphasis is placed on environmental factors, disturbance and succession, and how these factors affect species diversity and landscape patterns. One optional field trip.
• BOT 4553 - Plant Geography (Slashlisted with 5553). Prerequisite: 3453, 3534, or permission of instructor. Analysis of the evolutionary, ecological, genetic, and historical factors that affect present-day distributional patterns of plants on continents and islands. Particular emphasis is directed to range disjunctions and endemism as well as the effects of continental drift, geoclimatic changes, dispersal, polyploidy, and phylogeny on the flora of North America. No student may earn credit for both 4553 and 5553.
• E S 4463 - Environmental Evaluation and Management. Slashlisted with: E S 5463 Prerequisite: senior standing. Broad overview of natural resources management with attention to the techniques used in decision making and analysis. Class discussion and readings include a review of measures used to value natural systems (e.g. benefit cost analysis) and the role of private and public institutions in management. No student may earn credit for both 4493 and 5493
• GEOG 1114 - Physical Geography. A systematic introduction to the physical Earth, including Earth materials, landform processes and resultant landforms, Earth-sun relations, weather, climate, the water cycle, natural vegetation, and soil types. Emphasis is placed on the inter-relationships among these phenomena. Lab component. [II-LAB]
• GEOG 4283 - Biogeography (Slashlisted with 5283). Prerequisite: 1114 and junior standing. A survey of spatial patterns and processes in plant populations, plant communities, and vegetated landscapes. Emphasis is placed on the contemporary patterns of species and communities as determined by a combination of factors including physiography, climate, human influences, evolution, and dispersal. Field and laboratory techniques used in biogeographic research are also discussed. No student may earn credit for both 4283 and 5283.
• GEOL 3154 - Environmental Geology. Prerequisite: college algebra and permission of instructor; completion of one college level science course recommended. Designed for students who want to know the relationship between earth materials and environmental issues. Topics include minerals, rocks, depositional environments, porosity, permeability, water occurrence and chemistry, petroleum, natural gas, tar sands, oil shales, land subsidence, and earthquakes. Laboratory includes the study of minerals, rocks, maps, and well cuttings. Laboratory component.
• GEOS 2004 - Evolution of the Earth System. Overview of the earth from a systems perspective. Draws on knowledge from all geosciences to explore interconnections and co-evolution of the solid earth, atmosphere, oceans, and living things. Evolution of the Earth’s climate over geologic time including the hydrologic cycle, carbon cycle, and the “greenhouse effect.”The role living things play in the global environment. Extensive use of numerical models to explore structure and response of the Earth system. Students may find it helpful to have taken either Geography 1114, Geology 1104, or Meteorology 1014. Laboratory component. [II-LAB]
• METR 1014 - Introduction to Weather and Climate. For non-science majors. A descriptive study of both short-term and long-term atmospheric phenomena, evenly divided between: (1) the structure and processes in the atmosphere that affect our everyday weather; and (2) climate and causes of climate change. Laboratory component. [II-LAB]
• ZOO 3403 - Principles of Ecology. Prerequisite: eight hours of zoology. Patterns of environments and biological communities; the processes maintaining these patterns. Laboratory component.
• ZOO 4093 - Behavioral Ecology. Prerequisite: 3083 or permission. Interrelationship of an animal's ecology and its behavior. Optimal foraging theory, habitat selection, predator-prey adaptations, ecological constraints on sexual selection, and mating systems.

AD HOC ELECTIVES

• GEOG 1213 - Economic Geography. A survey of the contemporary global economy and analytical approaches developed by geographers studying it. Economic systems are examined at the household, urban, regional, national, and international levels. Special attention is given to changes in resource use, regional specialization, trade, industrial and retail location, and modernization. [III-SS]
• GEOG 2213 - Globalization and the Environment. Explores the complex assemblage of economic, political, and cultural processes popularly known as "globalization" and examines their implications for resource use and the environment. A central objective is to facilitate critical thinking on global environmental issues and enable students to challenge the increasingly polarized rhetoric concerning growth and the environment.
• GEOG 2603 - World Regional Geography. A broad survey of the world's major culture regions emphasizing basic physical, cultural, economic, and political patterns, as well as the processes that have created those patterns. Emphasis on economic development, ethnic conflict, and environmental degradation, as well as the changing role of the United States.[IV-WC]
• GEOG 4443 - Urban Ecology. Slashlisted with: GEOG 5443 Prerequisite: junior standing and permission of instructor. An interdisciplinary course that examines how cities acquire, utilize, and modify environmental inputs such as land, water, and energy, and in the process generate a complex set of waste streams and environmental impacts such as solid wastes, atmospheric emissions, and habitat modification. No student may earn credit for both 4443 and 5443.
• GEOL 1013 - Global Environmental Change. Past and present change on Earth from a global geologic perspective. Philosophy and methods of science, structure of the earth, plate tectonics, global catastrophes and geologic hazards, human impacts on the environment, global warming, pollution, ozone depletion, acid rain, resources, consumption, population growth, energy and technology. [II-NL]
• GEOL 1024 - The History of the Earth and Life. The origin of the Earth and solar system. Rocks and minerals; geologic time; plate tectonics, and continental drift. The ocean-atmosphere system; climate change over time; biological evolution. The fossil record of early life; the "Cambrian Explosion" of life in the oceans; invertebrate animals and their geological history. Geological history of fishes; evolution of plants. Terrestrial vertebrates, including dinosaurs and mammals. Mass extinctions; human evolution; impact of human activities on the global environment and the biosphere. A student may not receive credit for both 1024 and 1114. Laboratory component.[II-LAB]