This is the core course for the graduate Collaborative Specialization in Environmental Studies at the School of the Environment. In this course, we address the topic of "environmental decision-making," which we understand broadly as the challenging process of how humans engage with the natural world, and the many iterative (and sometimes invisible) decisions we make about how to organize human societies and activities.

While decision-making is itself a field of study, this course takes a more flexible interpretation of the term, involving choices about, and affecting, the environment. With a focus on the insights from across a range of disciplines — throughout the humanities, social sciences, and natural and applied sciences — and with attention to fields beyond academia, we consider multiple perspectives on the environment.

Through biweekly guest lectures, student presentations, group projects, and individual written assignments, we explore themes of worldviews and values (what assumptions we make about the world that shapes the kinds of decisions we can make), conflicting interests and information (at multiple scales), and decision-making models and tools (a survey of the range of tools that are available), along with questions of uncertainty, adaptation, and iterative decision-making processes.

In a time of online learning provoked by public health concerns, we will turn analytic attention to the benefits and challenges associated with a range of virtual technologies for interdisciplinary collaboration, research, and decision-making. As travel becomes constrained not only by pandemic conditions but also as a response to climate change and environmental degradation, we anticipate the need for these tools will increase in the future. In the class, then, we will consider how online platforms may be useful in enabling ongoing research efforts at a distance, and how different strategies and tools may be designed for better communication and action.

Students should emerge from the course with a broader set of perspectives on environmental and social challenges, enhanced communication skills across disciplines, and additional experience working in diverse teams. In addition, based on our new online course structure, students should also leave the course more confident about the options for virtual collaboration across disciplines.

Our central goal in the course and the Collaborative Specialization program is to enable conversations to take place within and beyond the classroom about the challenges of human-environment relationships, with new ideas on creative and just approaches to social and political decisions, and bioacoustics — as well as with electroacoustic composition, sonic art, and everyday sound-based practices. We will also consider pressing issues for the humanistic study of the environment, and reflect on the value and ethics of an acoustic approach. This course is open to students with any disciplinary background. Proficiency in music is not required.