Environmental Biology is the study of our environment and human's interactions with it.
This course will help you better understand the systems and processes that support all life, including yours, on Planet Earth. Our basis for learning will be understanding the core issues regarding our environment and the connections between these issues and our everyday lives. We will also use our study of environmental biology to learn how science works. Science is simply a formalized way of ''knowing'' that many of us frequently engage in without realizing that we are doing so. As Einstein said, ''The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.'' Physics and Reality, 1936
Instead of learning a multitude of obscure yet important facts that would probably be forgotten as soon as the exam is over, our approach will be to understand the ''big picture''. We will not ignore all detail, instead, we will focus on understanding the details that enable us to understand the whole.
The course is designed with the goal of increasing your understanding of our environment while helping you to further develop general critical thinking skills. The purpose of this approach is assist you in developing skill in evaluating technical and scientific information. This will equip you with tools to help you be savvy and discerning information consumers in the face of the glut of ''information'' that is part of our daily lives. The result is that you will be better able to separate fact from opinion and therefore become better informed. Another goal of the course is to assist your development as self-sufficient scholars that know how to collect and evaluate the quality of information you find on any topic that you are interested in -- or perhaps not really interested in, but one that has been assigned.