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The program will fuel your academic and professional growth with an intentional integration of community-focused, interdisciplinary, and applied problem-solving skills that will uniquely position you to tackle a range of environmental pressures, from the impacts of climate change to biodiversity loss to environmental and social justice.

Educational Objectives

Our solutions-focused curriculum and opportunities will powerfully equip you with the knowledge, research experiences, and applied skills to frame problems, investigate solutions, engage stakeholders, and visualize complex ideas along the path to applied problem solving.

Our capstone courses and project will put you to work with community partners to plan and implement regionally relevant research and applied outreach, serving as an impressive culminating project, enriching your hands-on skills and abilities, and helping to meet local and regional environmental needs.

Our concentrations in Sustainable Communities and Education and Community Outreach link with more than a dozen other minors across the University’s program offerings and will offer you a personalized path for specializing your studies in a way that best aligns with your career goals. 

Our intentional flexibility will allow you to craft your own, custom curriculum that enhances the program’s core with electives, options for a minor, and individually-tailored coursework based on your future academic and career goals.

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Complete all of the following Environmental Studies core courses:

• STAT 100 - Introduction to Statistics Units: 3
• ENVS 240 - Environmental Biology Units: 4
• ENSTU 280 - Environmental Economics and Policy Units: 3
• ENSTU 300 - Critical Thinking & Communication in Environmental Studies Units: 3
• ENSTU 350 - Research Methods for Environmental Studies Units: 4
• ENSTU 410 - Capstone Integration Seminar Units: 1
• ENSTU 412 - Enviro Thought & Practice Units: 3

Complete one of the following Environmental Science courses:

• ENVS 201 - Intro to Environmental Science Units: 4
• FYS 124 - Introduction to Environmental Science Units: 4

Complete one of the following courses:

• GEOL 110 - Introduction to Earth Science Units: 3
• GEOL 210 - Earth Science for Teachers Units: 3
• GEOL 260 - Geology/Hydrology Units: 4
• AGPS 128 - Introduction to Soil Science Units: 4

Complete one of the following courses:

• MSCI 270 - Introduction to Oceanography Units: 3
• ENVS 282 - Mtry Bay:Case Sty Env Sci &Pol Units: 3

Complete one of the following courses:

• ENSTU 309 - Climate Change Science and Solutions Units: 3
• ENSTU 387 - Water Resource Assess/Law/Poli Units: 3

Complete one of the following Capstone Project courses:

• ENSTU 471 - Projects for Sustainable City Year Units: 4
• ENSTU 472 - Projects in Environmental Education Units: 4

You’ll engage in a learning experience that makes the most of our distinctive coastal setting, with courses and lab work that unfolds at local conservation and environmental education sites like Watsonville Wetlands Watch and the Elkhorn Slough for field-based learning experiences. 

Your courses will regularly integrate field-based learning within local and regional ecosystems, including an opportunity to take part in an outdoor education practicum at the Elkhorn Slough Foundation’s Carneros Creek Outdoor Classroom in the community of Las Lomas.

Community-engaged learning is interwoven throughout the program’s curriculum, as a way to instill in you an appreciation and dedication to using your knowledge of pressing environmental issues to improve lives and communities.

You’ll develop your skills working on community-based restoration projects along with research and courses like Environmental Interpretation, Civic Ecology, and Social and Ecological Justice. These learning initiatives will empower you to view environmental problems through a social justice and equity lens, and strive to develop applied and locally contextual solutions to environmental challenges.