Climate Syllabus Bank Update

[Jeff Colgan]

Dear colleagues -

I hope you’re well. We are in that dreaded part of the academic calendar when we start to think about the upcoming semester, and I want to remind folks about the Climate Change Syllabus Bank. The central idea behind it is to make it easier for instructors to teach climate change — whether they are teaching the topic for the first time, or improving a course they’ve taught for years. This is an all-volunteer, imperfect, organic effort to try to help instructors out and do some good on climate change. The Syllabus Bank has grown and improved over the year it’s been operational, and it now has other resources beyond syllabi, like links to simulations (Enroads, Skyshares, etc.) and more. Please feel free to use (and contribute to) the Syllabus Bank. Details below.

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While there is a huge amount of student interest in the politics of climate change on college campuses, the supply of courses is often lacking -- even though climate change will affect the politics, sociology, economics, and law of the 21st century. Developing a new syllabus from scratch can be a barrier, so we want to offer some existing syllabi, for free, to potential instructors. Not only might this generate more courses about climate politics, it might also improve the existing courses, even among experts like yourselves. 

Not all courses are the same. Different instructors have different tools and approaches — like film documentaries or in-class simulations — that teach climate change in lots of different ways and from different perspectives. For instance, my course last fall emphasized (1) climate solutions, not just “admiring the problem,” and (2) ethnic and gender diversity when offering a range of readings.

To access the Syllabus Bank, go here:  https://watson.brown.edu/climatesolutionslab/syllabus-bank 

To submit your syllabus, follow the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdTDGnl7u1_evbPhJ_MMSTqyUXEQMyJX6xrbGQo6C0ZemlIcQ/viewform?usp=sf_link 

After you submit, the new Climate Solutions Lab at Brown will process the data and make all the syllabi available to others. For more info on the Climate Solutions Lab, please follow us on Twitter @ClimateSolLab or check our website https://watson.brown.edu/climatesolutionslab/ 

Please ALSO spread the word. We would love syllabi from lots and lots of people. The only boundary condition here is “post-secondary courses, about climate change, taught in the social sciences” – not geophysics or atmospheric science. And yes, we absolutely want your syllabus even if it is on a broad topic like “Global Environmental Politics,” so long as it has a sizable climate change component.

Thanks in advance,

Jeff Colgan
Richard Holbrooke Associate Professor of Political Science

Director, Climate Solutions Lab
Web: www.jeffcolgan.com  Twitter: @JeffDColgan