The seminar will provide the foundation for a Department of Landscape Architecture exhibition, “Forest Futures,” scheduled for the spring of 2024, which will explore the topic of shade and environmental justice.

Africa is the world’s most youthful continent and by the end of this century its 54 countries will be home to one in three people on Earth. This course examines contemporary African policy trends – challenges and opportunities – through the prism of national, sub-regional and international politics.

This course examines the relationship between urbanization and development through a historical and contemporary lens, paying close attention to the ways that the growth and structure of cities have influenced the economic, social, and political prospects of residents and their host nations, as well as vice-versa.

Human health and the health of our planet are inextricably linked and they can be mutually beneficial. However, our planet’s health and our health are at risk

Supporting leaders to make data-based decisions, we first investigate the current role of data and AI. International and US case studies on elections, polling, climate change, economic development, education, public health, corruption, autonomous vehicles, justice and policing provide a powerful range of insights.

This course asks how we design new architectures that fit within the circuits, circles, and loops of a healthy, regenerative material ecology.

Our planet and its biodiversity are in peril. We will begin by exploring the state of the planet and how we got here before focusing on what can still be done to conserve Earth’s remaining biodiversity, considering the biological, societal and ethical considerations of conservation in a changing world.

A project-based course, where groups of 2–4 students engage in synthetic organic or bioanalytical chemistry research. Students are introduced to experimental problems encountered in the synthesis, isolation, purification, characterization, and identification of potentially therapeutic organic compounds.

This course prepares students to invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. The course takes a finance and real assets point of view focusing on houses, buildings, infrastructure, and cities as individuals, businesses, and global society make choices about who and what to protect. There are perils and also extensive opportunities in the analysis of situations and the deployment of tools, data science, and capital leading to success even in the face of these tensions.

This course is about one of the largest industries in the world: energy. Not only will we cover energy sectors that have traditionally supplied economies across the globe, but we will also cover the energy transition needed to reduce climate change and its impacts. It will examine the economic, regulatory, and social contexts that provide the dynamic backdrop for how both new entrants and incumbent firms can navigate and drive the energy transition. How does the energy economy work, and how fast can it change? How are entrepreneurial start-ups disrupting the energy economy? How are corporations across sectors navigating and potentially driving the energy transition—or not? How are new policies being enacted worldwide impacting billion-dollar decisions? And how are different local communities responding, given the benefits and costs of enormous changes in the energy mix?

This is an investing/finance course, designed to build on skills introduced in the RC finance course, but with an emphasis on how investors should incorporate what have traditionally been considered “non-financial” criteria in their decisions: for example, climate risk, environmental sustainability, minority representation on boards, and even the potential to create social good. Covering both public and private markets, the course will present the unprecedented opportunities that have arisen due to energy transition and other trends through rigorous approaches to business model assessment, valuation, transaction structuring and exits, as well as equity selection and portfolio construction. The course also explores incentives, decision-making, and the crucial problems and opportunities within the industry itself.

How we teach about climate change is critical to our response as a global population. Educators adopt a longitudinal view on the outcomes of their daily efforts—guiding each generation with hope and possibility. How do we communicate the loss of what might be called a pact between the generations to the next generation? This course offers an intensive opportunity to explore issues related to teaching climate change in K-12.