University of California, Santa Barbara
AC-3: Undergraduate Program

The Environmental Studies program at UC Santa Barbara is designed to provide students with the scholarly background and intellectual skills necessary to understand complex environmental problems and to formulate decisions that are environmentally sound. A student majoring in environmental studies will explore a wide variety of environmental issues, including: the social and human environment, such as urban and regional planning, ethical and values systems, environmental law and policy, indigenous and religious beliefs, history and impact of past decisions, and environmental impact analysis; the physical environment, including the hydrologic cycle, waste management, coastal processes, energy production technologies, soil preservation, geography, and air/water pollution; and the biological environment, including the function of ecosystems, population dynamics, and toxicology. The Environmental Studies Program offers a B.A. and a B.S. in Environmental Studies with a variety of environmental concentrations. Environmental Studies also offers a B.S. in Hydrological Sciences.

Students in the Literature and the Environment minor explore environmental issues from British, American, and global perspectives, using a range of methodological approaches, with such emphases as non-human/human relations, environmental and social justice within a global rather than national context, and the political impact of institutions, networks, and regimes on bodies and the biosphere.

This major employs an integrated view of the earth as a dynamically linked system. Students take traditional geology courses while pursuing coursework in related disciplines, such as ocean, atmospheric, and earth-surface processes.

The goal of the Women, Culture, and Development minor is to allow students to study aspects of women's subordination and resistance to that subordination in the Third World and to ensure that cultural aspects of women's lives are taken seriously when analyzing women's position. Women, Culture, and Development is located at the intersection of three cutting edge areas within the academy: feminist studies, cultural studies, and Third World studies.

In accordance with the technical manual, we only included programs where the focus was explicitly on sustainability. Due to this, we left out several programs and emphases which include one or more learning outcomes related to sustainability, but that are not primarily focused on sustainability. Please see AC2: Learning Outcomes for a full list of related programs.