Boston University
AC-5: Immersive Experience

BU's Venice Environmental Studies Summer Program offers students a chance to spend six weeks in Venice, Italy, exploring a variety of critical issues related to climate change. Located in a city frequently cited in heated debates about the impacts of climate change, the program includes two complementary courses introducing the main processes driving change in the Venice lagoon and examining the scientific, economic and social challenges faced by the international community in developing and implementing policies to address the impacts of climate change. The dual focus of the program examines both the scientific underpinnings of climate change and sea level rise, and their effects on the economy and society. What types of policies are likely to be effective in addressing the impact of climate change, both on humans and on the environment? The curriculum uses the history of the Venice lagoon, as well as its more recent modifications, to illustrate the issues connected with human-driven changes in coastal bays and estuaries, sea level rise, and natural environmental dynamics.

Students who take part in BU's Contemporary Politics Program in Lima, Peru spend three and-a-half weeks living with local Peruvian families as students at a local university, investigating the political implications of natural resource extraction in Peru and the Andes. Why has natural resource extraction often brought economic stagnation, political turmoil, significant social unrest, and environmental degradation? Students engage directly with Peruvian students, scholars and various agencies and organizations with a stake in the resource extraction debate to examine the political factors surrounding the “resource curse”—the fact that abundant natural resources often lead to negative developmental outcomes.

http://www.bu.edu/abroad/programs/lima-contemporary-politics-program-summer/

http://www.bu.edu/abroad/programs/washington-dc-internship-program/

BU students also have the option of benefiting from BU's affiliation with the School of Field Studies, which offers multiple sustainability focused and related study abroad programs.