This course provides students with a chance to explore Boston as an immersive case study for understanding the relationship between urban environments, technology, sustainability, and equity. Students learn how the city is run, its plans for the future and how it is addressing current challenges. Through field trips and topics like sea level rise, housing, mobility and green space, the class asks students to consider the question: what does it mean for a city to be resilient? (4 credits) fall

This course advances students’ knowledge of climate change through the study of policy-led activism and sustainable practices for accessibility, green space, water shed planning/restoration and coastal adaptation. The scope of the course is global, with a keen focus on urban environments. Students engage in critical analysis of case studies that center not only on resilience but the repercussions of climate change in various US cities and how grassroots organizations are advocating for change in policy to mitigate and address climate disruption. Action-orientated research through community service and a sustained research project examining findings and offering solutions is central to the breadth of the course. Prerequisite: completion of an English Sequence (4 credits)

This course is an interdisciplinary course that explores relationships between scientific inquiry, technologies and the societies that employ them. The course approached the study of science and technology and their relationships to society from a variety of perspectives, including historical, philosophical, sociological, political, literary and artistic. Students are engaged in their major fields of study in disciplines whose goal is to utilize design, engineering and technology to make life "better." This course aims to help students define what constitutes "better" and for whom, and to understand how science and technology can both promote and hinder this quest for better. Prerequisite: completion of an English sequence (4 credits)

This course offers students an introduction to geographic information systems (GIS), a field of spatial analysis widely used in the social sciences to carry out demographic change analysis, historical data analysis, and environmental modeling. Topics covered in this hands-on course include thematic mapping, small-area estimation of income, well-being and happiness, crime pattern analysis, transport analysis, and environmental justice and policy evaluation. Students completing this hands-on course learn techniques for analyzing and visualizing location-based information to solve real-world problems. (4 credits)