Environmental Studies
Academic Department Introduction
Environmental studies examines the interdependent relationships between humans and the environment. Our department helps students cultivate the expertise, confidence, and empathy needed to tackle pressing environmental issues as scholars, scientists, activists, policy-makers, planners, artists, storytellers, and more.
Learning goals
Our goals are built upon values, skills, and experiences that recognize the complex, systemic inequities of environmental issues and actively empower people whose voices and perspectives have been marginalized. These include:
- Gaining an understanding of how racism, colonialism, and power shape environmental problems; appreciating the complexity of environmental challenges; and engaging in complicated dilemmas in a spirit of collaboration.
- Using data, argument, and case studies to understand social, physical, and biological processes.
- Participating in a transdisciplinary and collaborative learning community where fellow students, faculty, staff, alums, and the public are all valued sources of expertise.
Programs of study
Environmental studies major and minor
Students gain skills, experiences, and values necessary to tackle pressing environmental challenges.
Course highlights
Environmental Policy Research Seminar
ES312
Focuses both on how to make and how to study environmental policy. Examines issues essential in understanding how environmental policy works and explores these topics in depth through case studies of current environmental policy issues. Students will also undertake an original research project and work in groups on influencing or creating local environmental policy.
(ES 312 and POL2 312 are cross-listed courses.)-
Global Health and the Environmental Crisis
WGST302
Social understandings of the relationship between human health and the environment are visible and malleable in moments of crisis, from industrial disasters, weather-related catastrophes, and political conflict, as everyday events like childbirth and routine sickness. But these understandings vary dramatically across time and community. This course addresses the complex dynamics at work in the representations of and responses to health and the environment that emerge during moments of crisis. By studying the way these constructions are shaped by social, political, technological, and moral contexts, we will analyze the role of nature, knowledge, ethics and power in such contemporary problems as human migration, hunger, debility, and disease. The class will together consider the meaning of crisis and how it is shaped by social systems such as gender, sexuality, ability, class, and race. (ES 302 and WGST 302 are cross-listed courses.) -
Sacred Earth
REL229
Every religious culture regards the earth as a site of sacrality, whether understood as the creation of the gods and thus intrinsically sacred, or as an entity through and with which the sacred interacts. In our time of escalating ecological disaster and runaway global heating, humans can claim these traditions as one way of placing our human wreckage of the planet into a larger critical perspective than the scientific warnings, corporate denials, and governmental temporizing that currently inform the environmental crisis. This course will introduce students to ideas of the terrestrial sacred and how humans should relate to it from a range of religious and spiritual traditions, including Native American, Biblical, Christian, Transcendentalist, and today’s ecological thinkers. Together we will assess the value and applicability of these diverse approaches to sacred earth for today’s ever more urgent crisis of global environmental disruption. No prior knowledge of or course work in Religious Studies is required. (ES 229 and REL 229 are cross-listed courses.)
Places and spaces
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The Frost Center for the Environment, home of the Environmental Studies Department, offers access to the Science Complex, greenhouses, and laboratory equipment. Thoroughly interdisciplinary, the Frost Center supports programming and initiatives that engage the whole community, such as talks on topics ranging from eco-poetics to environmental justice.
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A stunning greenhouse that embodies architectural sustainability and interdisciplinary education, Global Flora houses the College’s preeminent collection of plants in dry and tropical biomes.
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The Environmental Science Research Laboratory is a shared space in which faculty and students engage in research in the natural sciences that informs—and is motivated by—interdisciplinary environmental questions and issues. They analyze environmental samples ranging from plant material to ocean water and use the resulting data to better understand scientific processes and feedback. Photo: Dave Burk © SOM
Research highlights
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Students working with Professor Jay Turner have tracked investments in clean energy manufacturing since the Inflation Reduction Act became law. In March 2023, they were invited to brief the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on what they had learned.
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The MetroWest Energy Justice Collaborative, an independent study course in our department, worked with Niri Kumar, the energy advocate for Wellesley’s neighboring towns of Natick and Framingham, in fall 2023. Students studied energy justice in class and worked on these issues through community-based projects.
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How can we make global shipping greener? One place to start is the world’s ports. Students working with Professor Beth DeSombre have researched sustainability measures at the busiest ports around the world with the help of a multiyear grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Sometimes a plant species can dominate one landscape yet be hard to find in a similar place nearby. Students in Professor Alden Griffith’s lab research the mechanisms of plant population dynamics, with a particular focus on invasive species and the influence of local environmental conditions. This work integrates measurements from the field and laboratory, the development of quantitative models, and greenhouse experiments.
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Students working with Professor Dan Brabander explore the intersection of geosciences and public health with a focus on legacy metal (e.g. lead and arsenic) mobility in the environment. Environmental justice communities are often disproportionately affected by these toxic elements in soil and dust. Professor Brabander’s lab works with community partners to co-discover research questions that lead to sustainable and transformative interventions for impacted communities.
Opportunities
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Study abroad
Through our partner institutions, students can enroll in environmentally focused programs in Panama, Costa Rica, Kenya, New Zealand, and elsewhere.
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Study off campus
Students can cross-register for environmental studies classes at MIT, Olin College of Engineering, Babson College, and the Marine Studies Consortium.
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Student organizations
Several student-run organizations focus on climate change, food justice, sustainability, and outdoor activities.
Beyond Wellesley
Beyond Wellesley
Many of our graduates become scholars, scientists, activists, health care workers, policy-makers, and artists. They work in the nonprofit sector, conduct research, and teach. Recent employers include the National Parks Conservation Association, U.S. Department of Energy, Smithsonian, and Conservation Corps. Students have continued their studies at graduate programs including the Yale School of the Environment, the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke, the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and Stanford Law School.
Recent Employers
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481