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
Purpose: This course is the second of a two-module sequence in building technology (6121, 6122) and constitutes part of the core curriculum in architecture.
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.
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.
The goal of the course is to introduce the global potential of plants as a means of design for shaping the character of a place for individual and collective human experience.
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.
Through lectures, discussions, readings, case studies, and design projects, the goal of this course is to understand the complexity of living systems to integrate it in landscape design.
The course will be designed to provide students with an understanding of relevant physical, technical and social factors including an historical perspective.
The course emphasizes a molecular scale understanding of energy and entropy; free energy in equilibria, acid/base reactivity, and electrochemistry; molecular bonding and kinetics; catalysis in organic and inorganic systems; the union of quantum mechanics, nanostructures, and photovoltaics; and the analysis of nuclear energy.
The course covers climate dynamics and climate variability phenomena and mechanisms, and provides hands-on experience running and analyzing climate models, as well as using dynamical system theory tools.
Fundamental concepts and formalisms of conservation of energy and increase of entropy as applied to natural and engineered environmental and biological systems.
