Course Comparison

SCN3635 Human Nutrition
(Formerly Personal Nutrition)
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits


Every day we are bombarded with information about diet and health, often confusing and contradictory. As consumers, it is difficult to separate fact from fad, truth from fiction. This course will provide a foundation in basic nutrition, including anatomy and physiology of the digestive tract and the development of disease, with the goal of applying this information to aid in making informed choices in the treatment and prevention of nutrition related disease. We will also explore how the personal actions a student can take to encourage a sustainable diet, defined as “food choices that maximize personal health while minimizing the impact on the environment.

Prerequisites: NST10%

SCN3630 Economics Botany
Advanced Liberal Arts

This course will investigate the relationship between plants and society. Without plants and plant products humans would be hungry, naked, and lacking oxygen to breath. We will begin by exploring the basics of different plant parts and how plants grow and reproduce. We will then examine plants as sources of food, materials, perfumes, drugs, and medicines. Throughout the course we will discuss the role plants have played in influencing economics, language, politics, and religion. Current topics of particular interest for this course include the debate over genetically engineered crops, the development of new pharmaceutical medicines, the changes in human diet, and the use of plant products in new technologies. This course will emphasize the development of skills in critical thinking, synthesis of information, science literacy, hand-on exercises, and current topical issues in plant biology.

Prerequisites: NST I

SCN3615 Ecology of Animal Behavior
4 Advanced Lib Arts Credits

The study of the nature, variety and function of the fundamental types of animal behaviors. Communication, habitat selection, predation and antipredator defense, reproductive strategies, tactics and mating systems, and play and social behaviors will be compared and analyzed, and applications to human behavior will be discussed.

Prerequisites: NST10%
% - Wildcard

SCN 3604: Green and Blue Technology Solutions

4 advanced liberal arts credits

Green and blue technologies, (also collectively referred to as “cleantech”, “greentech”, or “envirotech”), use science to understand and address negative impacts and promote new approaches to support human activity and economic growth that are less harmful to natural systems. While emergent green and blue technologies often hold promise of creating a more sustainable future, there is a wide range of associated challenges to seeing them adopted and in some cases avoiding unintended consequences of such adoption. 

In this course we will explore different technology solutions across three thematic areas:  Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation, Resource Use, and Pollution Control. We consider the role that technology can play in addressing socio-ecological challenges and develop a framework for evaluating emerging technologies and designing new ones. The course will also include opportunities for students to engage with professionals in cleantech fields. The course will host a guest speaker for each of the three themes of the course (climate, resources, pollution). The course will also offer optional field trips that will allow students to observe and experience different local initiatives to develop cost effective sustainable technologies. The overall goal of this course is for students to develop the tools and thinking necessary to understand our current, critical environmental challenges and identify the role that technology and business may play in developing solutions that are efficient, equitable, and sustainable.

Prerequisites: NST 10%%