Interested in global issues and community engagement? Check out these exciting new courses!
New Course Offerings in Term 2
- CONS 449C 204: Conversations on race and climate change
- Time: Mondays, 1:30 – 4:30 pm
- Instructor: Janette Bulkan
- Credits: 3
Conversations will focus on the shared root causes of climate change and racialization, in both a global context and the local context of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) land. Together, students will develop an analysis of land and climate justice for transformative social action, research, and organizing. As a Student Directed Seminar, CONS 449C is a discussion-based upper-year undergraduate class led by and for undergraduate students. View this course on SSC.
As a Student Directed Seminar (SDS), Conversations is a discussion-based upper-year undergraduate class led by and for undergraduate students at UBC. Click here for more information on the SDS program.
To sign up for this course, complete this form.
- ASTU 204C: Collaborative Methods for Global Community Development
- Time: Tuesdays, 5:00 – 8:00pm
- Credits: 3
- Instructor: Moura Quayle
How do we as individuals engage in system-level change? What skills and approaches make for effective change? And how might we address issues related to global migration?
Who should take this course? This second-year course is open to all UBC students interested in collaborative methodologies such as systems thinking, strategic design, and forum theatre. Emphasis will be on bridging theory and practice around collaborative methods for problem definition and problem-solving while exploring the challenges and opportunities of global migration using virtual reality and other creative technologies. View this course on SSC.
- ASTU 401G: Wicked Problems in Community Development
- Time: Tuesdays/Thursdays, 12:00 – 2:00pm
- Credits: 3
- Instructor: Tom Scholte
Wicked Problems are considered to be of a fundamentally different nature to “problems in the natural sciences, which are definable and separable and may have solutions that are findable.” Wicked Problems have an intrinsic complexity of such that they cannot be solved but only tamed or “at best re-solved – over and over again. In this course, students will work remotely with a community partner in India on wicked problems that they are currently examining.
Who should take this course? The course is open to all third and fourth-year UBC students who are interested in understanding wicked problems through a systems lens. Using virtual reality to gain contextual understanding, students will learn how to utilize the transdisciplinary tools of strategic design, systems theory, and forum theatre with current best practices in international community engagement as its foundation. View this course on SSC.
- CONS 449C 203: Ecology in a Changing Climate
- Time: Tuesdays/Thursdays, 11:00am – 12:30pm
- Credits: 3
- Instructor: Elizabeth Wolkovich
This is a 200-level course, offered this year as a directed studies 400-level listing.
Anthropogenic climate change has already raised the global temperature nearly one degree, with far more radical warming predicted in the coming decades. With this elevated temperature regime come shifts in frosts, precipitation, storms and extremes. Alongside these major physical impacts many aspects of ecological systems are changing. This course will build on the fundamental organizing units of ecology: individuals, populations, species, communities and ecosystems to build a framework to understand what has shifted in the last 40 years and what we may expect by the end of the century.
This class will be lecture and discussion-based with students expected to actively participate and work with one another in and outside of class on course projects. Knowledge of fundamental concepts in ecology and evolution will be key for keeping pace with the course. Prerequisites are one of: BIOL 121 and GEOB 207, or permission of instructor. For more information, please visit the Temporal Ecology Lab website or read the course description on your SSC.
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