Bryn Mawr College

Program Requirements and Opportunities

The information listed below is a direct excerpt from the 2013-14 Course Catalog.

Published annually, the Course Catalog sets out the requirements of the academic programs--the majors, minors, and concentrations. Each Bryn Mawr student must declare her major before the end of her sophomore year. Students may also declare a minor or a concentration, but neither is required for the A.B. degree. Students must comply with the requirements published in the Course Catalog at the time when they declare the major, minor and/or concentration.

The Course Catalog also sets out the College requirements. Students must comply with the College requirements published at the time they enter Bryn Mawr College.

2012-13 Catalog
2011-12 Catalog
2010-11 Catalog
2009-10 Catalog

Students may complete a minor in Environmental Studies inn conjunction with any major at Bryn Mawr, Haverford, or Swarthmore pending approval of the student's coursework plan by the home department and the home-campus Environmental Studies director.

The Johanna Alderfer Harris Environmental Studies Program at Bryn Mawr College enables students and faculty to come together to explore academic interests in the environment. The program sponsors speakers, special events, and field trips, and offers support for student work during the summer, in the form of the college's competitive Green Grants. In addition, The Harris Environmental Studies Program is the Bryn Mawr campus home for the Tri-College Environmental Studies Minor. The program benefits from two endowed chairs in Environmental Studies, The Johanna Alderfer Harris and William H. Harris, M.D. Chair in Environmental Studies, currently held by Growth and Structure of Cities Associate Professor Ellen Stroud, and the Harold Alderfer Chair in Environmental Studies, currently held by Geology Associate Professor Donald Barber.

The Tri-Co Environmental Studies Minor

Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges offer an interdisciplinary Tri-College Environmental Studies Minor, involving departments and faculty from the natural sciences, engineering, math, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts on all three campuses. The Tri-College Environmental Studies Minor aims to bring students and faculty together to explore interactions among earth systems, human societies, and local and global environments.

The Tri-Co ES Minor aims to cultivate in students the capacity to identify and confront key environmental issues through a blend of multiple disciplines, encompassing historical, cultural, economic, political, scientific, and ethical modes of inquiry. Acknowledging the reciprocal dimensions of materiality and culture in the historical formations of environments, this program is broadly framed by a series of interlocking dialogues: between the "natural" and the "built"; between the local and the global; and between the human and the nonhuman.

The minor consists of six courses, including an introductory course and capstone course, and the courses may be completed at any of the three campuses (or any combination thereof). To declare the minor, students should contact the Environmental Studies director at their home campus.

Minor Requirements

The Environmental Studies Interdisciplinary Minor consists of six courses, as follows:

1. A required introductory course to be taken prior to the senior year. This may be ENVS 101 at Bryn Mawr or Haverford or the parallel course at Swarthmore College (ENVS 001). Any one of these courses will satisfy the requirement, and students may take no more than one such course for credit toward the minor.
2. Four elective course credits from approved lists of core and cognate courses, including two credits in each of the following two categories (A and B). No more than one cognate course credit may be used for each category (see course list below for more information about core and cognate courses). Students are encouraged to count no more than one elective from their major field toward the minor, and to pay close attention to rules for double-counting on their home campuses and major departments.
   1. Environmental Science, Engineering & Math: courses that build understanding and knowledge of scientific methods and theories, and that explore how these can be applied in identifying and addressing environmental challenges. At least one of the courses in this category must have a laboratory component.
   2. Environmental Social Sciences, Humanities & Arts: courses that build understanding and knowledge of social and political structures as well as ethical considerations, and how these inform our individual and collective responses to environmental challenges.
3. A senior seminar with culminating work that reflects tangible research design and inquiry, but which might materialize in any number of project forms. Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College's ENVS 397 (Environmental Studies Senior Seminar, co-taught by faculty members from Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges) and Swarthmore College's ENVS 091 (Environmental Studies Capstone Seminar) satisfy the requirement.

Core Courses for the Environmental Studies Minor

• Every student should take an introductory course (101 or 001) before the senior year

• Every student should take a capstone course (397 or 091) during the senior year

Bryn Mawr

ENVS 101 Introduction to Environmental Studies

ENVS 397 Environmental Studies Senior Seminar

Haverford

ENVS 101 Case Studies in Environmental Issues

ENVS 397 Environmental Studies Senior Seminar

Swarthmore

ENVS 001 Introduction to Environmental Studies

ENVS 091 Environmental Studies Capstone Seminar

Approved Electives for the Environmental Studies Minor

• Two courses are required from each category (A and B).


• At least one course in Category A should have a lab.


• Only one course in each category may be a "cognate" course. Cognate courses, marked with an asterisk, are valuable for minor but are not as centrally focused on environmental studies methodologies and materials as other courses on the list.
• Pay close attention to "double-counting" rules for your major. You are encouraged to choose electives outside of your major.

Category A) Environmental Science, Math and Engineering

Bryn Mawr

BIOL 210 Biology and Public Policy
BIOL 220 (L) Ecology
BIOL 225* Biology of Plants
BIOL 250* Computational Methods
BIOL 309 (L) Biological Oceanography
BIOL 320 (L) Evolutionary Ecology
CHEM 206 Chemistory of Renewable Energy
GEOL 101 (L) How the Earth Works
GEOL 103 (L) Earth Systems and the Environment
GEOL 130* Life in Earth's Future Climate (half-credit)
GEOL 203 Paleobiology
GEOL 206* Energy Resources and Sustainability
GEOL 209 Natural Hazards
GEOL 230* The Science of Soils
GEOL 255 Problem Solving in the Environmental Sciences
GEOL 298 Applied Environmental Science
GEOL 302 Low Temperature Geochemistry
GEOL 314 Marine Geology
GEOL 328* Geographic Information Systems
MATH 210* Differential Equations w/ Apps (Environmental Problems)
MATH 295 Introduction to Math and Sustainability

Haverford

BIOL 123* Perspectives in Biology: Scientific Literacy (half-credit)
BIOL 124* Perspectives in Biology: Tropical Infectious Disease (half-credit)
BIOL 310* Molecular Microbiology (half-credit)
BIOL 314* Photosynthesis (half-credit)
CHEM 112*(L) Chemical Dynamics
CHEM 358 Topics in Environmental Chemistry (half-credit)
PHYS 111b Energy Options and Science Policy

Swarthmore

BIOL 016*(L) Microbiology
BIOL 017*(L) Microbial Pathogenesis and Immune Response
BIOL 020*(L) Animal Physiology
BIOL 025*(L) Plant Biology
BIOL 026*(L) Invertebrate Zoology
BIOL 031* History and Evolution of Human Food
BIOL 034*(L) Evolution
BIOL 036 (L) Ecology
BIOL 039 (L) Marine Biology
BIOL 115E Plant Molecular Genetics - Biotechnology
BIOL 116* Microbial Processes and Biotechnology
BIOL 137 Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function
CHEM 001*(L) Chemistry in the Human Environment
CHEM 043*(L) Analytical Methods and Instrumentation
CHEM 103 Topics in Environmental Chemistry
ENGR 003* Problems in Technology
ENGR 004A Environmental Protection
ENGR 004B * Swarthmore and the Biosphere
ENGR 004E Introduction to Sustainable Systems Analysis
ENGR 035*(L) Solar Energy Systems
ENGR 057*(L) Operations Research
ENGR 063 (L) Water Quality and Pollution Control
ENGR 066 (L) Environmental Systems
ENVS 090* Directed Reading in Environmental Studies
MATH 056* Modeling
PHYS 002E* FYS: Energy
PHYS 020*(L) Principles of the Earth Sciences
PHYS 024 (L) The Earth and Its Climate

Category B) Environmental Humanities, Social Sciences and Arts

Bryn Mawr

ANTH 203 Human Ecology
ANTH 210 Medical Anthropology
ANTH 237 Environmental Health
ANTH 263* Anthropology and Architecture
ARCH 245 The Archaeology of Water
CITY 175 Environment and Society
CITY 201 Introduction to GIS for Social and Environmental Analysis
CITY 241 Building Green
CITY 250* U.S. Urban Environmental History
CITY 278 American Environmental History
CITY 279 Global Environmental Change
CITY 329 Advanced Topics in Urban Environmental Studies
CITY 345 Advanced Topics in Environment and Society
CITY 360 Brazil: City, Nature, Identity
CITY 377 Global Architecture of Oil
EAST 352 China's Environment: History, Policy, and Rights
EAST 362 Environment in Contemporary East Asia
ECON 225* Economics of Development
ECON 234 Environmental Economics
ECON 242 Economics of Local Environmental Programs
EDUC 268 Educating for Environmental Literacy
ENGL 204*Literatures of American Expansion
ENGL 268 Native Soil: Indian Land & American Lit 1588-1840
ENGL 275 Food Revolutions
ENGL 251 Food For Thought
ENGL 313 Ecological Imaginings
HIST 212 Pirates, Travelers and Natural Historians
HIST 237* Urbanization in Africa
PHIL 240 Environmental Ethics
POLS 222 Intro to Environmental Issues
POLS 278* Oil, Politics, Society and Economy
POLS 310* Comparative Public Policy
POLS 321* Technology and Politics
POLS 339* The Policy-making Process
POLS 354* Comparative Social Movements
SOCL 165 Problems in the Natural and Built Environment
SOCL 247 Environmental Social Problems
SOCL 316* Science, Culture and Society

Haverford

ANTH 252* State and Development in South Asia
ANTH 263* Anthropology of Space: Housing and Society
ANTH 281 Nature/Culture: Introduction to Environmental Anthropology
ENGL 217* Humanimality
ENGL 257* British Topographies
ENGL 356 Studies in American Environment and Place
HIST 119* International History of the United States
HIST 253 History of the US Built Environment
POLS 261* Global Civil Society
POLS 370 Environmental Political Thought

Swarthmore

ECON 076 Environmental Economics
ENGL 009C FYS: Natural History and Imagination
ENGL 070G Writing Nature
ENGL 071H Natural History and the Imagination
ENVS 090* Directed Reading in Environmental Studies
ENVS 092* Research Project
HIST 089 Environmental History of Africa
LING 120* Anthropological Linguistics: Endangered Languages
LITR 022G* Food Revolutions: History, Politics, Culture
PHIL 035 Environmental Ethics
POLS 043 Environmental Policy and Politics
POLS 048* The Politics of Population
POLS 049 Environmental Justice: Theory and Action
RELG 022 Religion and Ecology
SOAN 023C Anthropological Perspectives on Conservation