Program Overview
Environmental Studies Program
The Environmental Studies program at Rutgers University offers students an exciting academic adventure, allowing them to design their own degree and delve into coursework from over 20 collaborating departments across several schools. This interdisciplinary approach provides endless possibilities for exploration and real impact on the world.
Program Description
Students in the Environmental Studies program investigate a range of environmental concerns through coursework, field studies, and individual research, including:
- the implications of climate change
- water scarcity
- genetically modified organisms in food chains
- instabilities in the global energy market
- the deteriorating infrastructure of the urban built environment
- the uneven distribution of environmental costs along axes of inequality.
Collaborating Programs and Departments
The Environmental Studies program collaborates with the following departments:
- Agriculture and Food Systems
- Anthropology
- Art History
- Biological Sciences
- Chemistry
- Comparative Literature
- Earth and Planetary Sciences
- Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources
- Economics
- Environmental Policy, Institutions and Behavior
- English
- Environmental Planning and Design
- French
- Geography
- Geology
- German
- History
- Human Ecology
- Latino and Caribbean Studies
- Landscape Architecture
- Marine and Coastal Sciences
- Philosophy
- Political Science
- Public Health
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Spanish and Portuguese
- Women's and Gender Studies
- Vietnamese and Southeast Asian History
Program Options
The Environmental Studies program offers the following options:
- Environmental Studies Major
- Environmental Studies Minor
Program Goals
The program aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of environmental issues and the skills to address them. It recognizes that insights from the social sciences and humanities are essential in forming the foundation for how we answer questions and which questions we should be asking in the first place. The program goes beyond a narrow focus on the physical sciences or purely technological solutions to solve environmental problems.