Climate change is an urgent and multifaceted challenge facing all of society.
Harvard faculty teach an expanding array of courses examining the many dimensions of this shared challenge. Explore courses in climate and sustainability ranging from economics and English to public health and climate science.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE SALATA INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY
The course is an introduction to the field of global mental health. The curriculum is primarily informed by the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health & Sustainable Development (2018) (https://www.thelancet.com/commissions/global-mental-health) which proposed a re-framing of mental health in three key ways: adopting a dimensional approach to mental health; recognizing the convergence of social and biological determinants in the emergence of mental health problems; and realizing a rights based approach to mental health.
This foundation course examines how societies and states have responded to a range of disasters around the world, drawing key lessons for communities (and nations) preparing for climate changes.
In this course, we will discuss successful case studies of use of AI for public health, environmental sustainability, public safety and public welfare.
This course revisits structures, refines speaking and writing skills, and advances critical linguistic exchanges through the discussion of environmental, cultural, economic, and social issues of sustainability.
Outfitting Architecture imagines building assemblies like clothing—something you can layer, unzip, or throw on depending on the weather, your mood, or how many people are coming for dinner.This option studio challenges dominant understandings of comfort in architecture, proposing a layered, climate-responsive design methodology that bridges social, thermal, and material entanglements within the apartment buildings and arcades of Athens. The studio investigates how architecture—like clothing—can be rethought as an adaptable, soft system able to evolve for shifting climates and forms of inhabitation.
The course is designed as an in-depth study of the place of Central Asia in Eurasian and global politics, and the policies of key external actors, such as Russia, the United States, China, the European Union, Turkey, Iran, Japan, South Korea and India, toward the region.
From childhood lead exposure, to the pathways and practices of our ancestors millions of years ago, teeth retain incredible records of our collective pasts. This course examines teeth from two main perspectives. The first is medical and dental, examining the developmental biology and mineralogy of how teeth form, and how formation can fail in the context of health crises. The second is historical: the class will learn how teeth are records of past history and climate, even into deep time, millions of years into the past. Every week, we will read contemporary scientific literature on teeth from multiple perspectives. In the second half of the course, students will work collectively on a research project.
This class covers the economics of the environment and climate change, with a focus on market-based solutions to externalities, open-access problems, and blended policy responses.
This course will provide students with an understanding of water that will inform their professional approaches to landscape architecture, architecture, and planning, and contribute to protecting, improving, restoring, and sustaining water resources.