Hampshire College
AC-3: Undergraduate Program

The Environmental Studies and Sustainability Program (ESSP) at Hampshire College brings together a rich grouping of courses, ongoing projects, campus programs, and speaker series that allows students to develop their own ways of combining the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to study and work on environmental and sustainability topics. Research and study take place everywhere, from classroom and laboratory to forests and wetlands. Through ESSP, Hampshire students develop a truly interdisciplinary, project-based course of studies that allows them to tackle complex, real-world issues under the mentorship of faculty and close collaboration with other students.

In architecture we find elements of art history, critical theory, engineering, design, and the studio arts, as well as urban planning, sociology, economics, and political science. Hampshire College is a member of the Five College Architectural Studies Program, and Hampshire students have the option of obtaining a Five College major. The program is fiercely interdisciplinary, combining the history, theory, and design of the built environment. With their faculty committee, each Hampshire student designs their own rigorous course of study for their Division II (two-year) academic concentration and can combine any number of fields of interest. Recent examples include ecology and design, sustainable transportation systems, spirituality and space, memorialization and urban planning — virtually any number of others that meet the intellectual, artistic, and cultural passions of each student. Many of our students choose to concentrate in sustainable practices and community design, working in the studio and in the local community. Our goal: nothing less than to change the way we live in the world.

The Population and Development Program (PopDev) was established in 1986 as a center for critical thinking, learning, and advocacy on issues of population and the environment. PopDev challenges traditional views of over-population and immigration as primary causes of environmental degradation, political instability, and poverty, and promotes social, reproductive, and environmental justice. The program's publications include the "DifferenTakes" issue-paper series: (http://sites.hampshire.edu/popdev/different-takes/) "Population in Perspective" social justice curriculum: (http://www.populationinperspective.org/) PopDev offers courses and workshops, including a political writing workshop for student journalists, and hosts international scholars and activists to speak on critical global issues. See also https://sites.hampshire.edu/popdev/

Five College Sustainability Studies brings together several programs to encourage the study and application of sustainability across all five campuses in the consortium and beyond. The FCSS Certificate Program is available to students at Amherst College, Hampshire College, and Mount Holyoke College and incorporates courses and other academic offerings from all five campuses.

The Five College certificate programs noted above serve as "minor" and "concentration" programs for Hampshire College students because the Hampshire College curriculum was intentionally designed to have no pre-defined majors or minors. In consultation with Hampshire faculty members, all students, are expected to define their own course of study. Additional programs that provide Hampshire College students with substantial guidance and resources related to sustainability studies: Five College Peace and World Security Studies: This is a multidisciplinary educational program designed to stimulate student and faculty interest in the study of critical international issues, especially those connecting issues of conflict and the environment. https://www.hampshire.edu/pawss/peace-and-world-security-studies Religion: This is an interdisciplinary and interdenominational, facilitating the exploration of the ways religion has shaped our history, political life, social and cultural institutions, literature, arts, sciences, and even the languages we speak. Students may focus on a specific religion or on co-evolution of multiple religions in a particular area of the world; integrate spiritual perspectives into a study of healing, gender, or environmental sustainability; or may critically analyze a sacred text. https://www.hampshire.edu/areas-of-study/religion Five College Coastal and Marine Sciences Program and Certificate: This program offers an interdisciplinary marine-related curriculum available to students at all five campuses. Through active affiliations with some of the nation's premier centers for marine study (field trips, internships, and study-away programs), students engage in hands-on research to complement their course work. Many students who participate in the program go on to advanced study or professional work in various areas of marine science. Five College faculty from both the natural and social sciences teach courses in the program. Disciplines represented include animal behavior, biology, botany, chemistry, ecology, engineering, geology, natural resource management, and zoology in the natural sciences, and government, public policy and economics in the social sciences. https://www.fivecolleges.edu/marine Five College Program in Culture, Health and Science: This certificate program allows undergraduate liberal arts students to explore human health, disease, and healing from interdisciplinary perspectives. Graduate schools recognize that tomorrow's health experts will need interdisciplinary training to link their understandings of history, culture, and behavior with clinical, biological, and epidemiologic models of health and disease. Under faculty mentorship, each student designs their own plan of study that approaches "health" holistically from the perspective of natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. https://www.fivecolleges.edu/chs Five College International Relations Program: One of the core features of this program is the Five College International Relations Certificate. With challenges such as globalization, regional and ethnic conflict, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, demographic stress, global climate change, and wide disparities in global economic development and global public health, among others, the world is increasingly complex. Now more than ever, students must be prepared to contend with these global challenges with interdisciplinary understandings. https://www.fivecolleges.edu/international Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies: This program raises questions critical to a meaningful liberal arts education. Concepts such as power, citizenship, culture, identity, justice, and sovereignty take on new meanings in the context of colonialism and the struggles, past and present, of Indigenous peoples. https://www.fivecolleges.edu/natam