College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences 2015-2016 Catalog

209 MACS 0630 – Life on a Water Planet Life on a Water Planet has four broad aims: (1) to provide a holistic and current perspective on key water issues that includes ecological, socio-economic, historical and cultural perspectives, together with consideration of the water needs of other species; (2) to provide a forum for sharing understandings and perspectives; (3) to help you shift your perception of our planet from "the earth" to "water"; (4) to encourage you to take information and knowledge about water issues from a broad base and apply it to your own community or individual situation. The course is organized into ten units which involve readings available as direct links with the course homepage, online activities and discussion, and optional web resources for further exploration and study. MACS 0636 – Marine Mammal Management This course is essentially a interdisciplinary approach to examining the present state of the relationship between marine mammals, people and the environment: as this has evolved over time, as it stands today and as it is likely to be for the future, whether by default or by design. MACS 0647 – Iraq: Restoring the Marshlands International Coastal Zone Restoration in the Marshlands of Iraq: Throughout the 1990's the regime of Saddam Hussein committed genocide and ecocide against the people and environment of Mesopotamia-the vast marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Southern Iraq. The government did this through a secret "Plan for the Marshes" to drain away its life-giving water and attack, kill and scatter its half-million inhabitants who were predominantly Sunni Moslem. Today, the former regime is gone and the country is occupied by other forces, but Mesopotamia is still a depopulated wasteland. MACS 0655 – Environmental Remote Sensing Environmental Remote Sensing & Geographic Information System: This course assumes that you have an interest in Remote Sensing (RS), Geographic Information System (GIS) and large-scale Earth observation, and wish to learn about using these tools to study the Earth and its processes. It doesn't matter whether you consider yourself a chemist, physicist, biologist, geologist or geographer, or simply have a reasonable grounding and interest in the Earth Sciences. Nonetheless, you must be prepared to grapple with some basic ideas of Physics. The distance-learning course is designed to be accessible and to give a general induction to a wide scope of relevant topics. MACS 0664 – Internship in Coastal Policy Students enrolled in this course are expected to invest the equivalent of 3 hours per week for 14 weeks (i.e. at least 42 hours) in their internship. This can be done at a research organization, private company or consulting firm; local, county, state or federal agency; or other approved venue that is related to coastal zone activities. In addition to hands-on work, each intern will also keep an academic journal of internship activities. The journal will be submitted for review for the final grade. The student's supervisor at the internship venue will also evaluate the student. Permission and approval of supervising Professor is required before you enroll in this class. MACS 0665 – Environmental Sustainability This web-based distance education course highlights more than 25 years of international discussion, debate and ideas, with regard to the state of the environment and our actions towards it. Key considerations and voices are included, from both North and South. This unusual and challenging course avoids the usual categorizations, and instead examines in a cross-cutting approach the environmental and social issues that affect our lives.