Climate Change Minor (Pre-Fall 2022)
This web page is for students who entered Cornell before Fall 2022. Other students should use the new minor page with different courses and requirements.
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and dozens of courses at Cornell explore the many facets of a warming world—from impacts on farming and food, to the causes of climate change, from the potential of sustainable energy to replace fossil fuels, to the slow response of governments worldwide. The climate change minor gives students the opportunity to explore climate change from varied disciplinary perspectives while gaining a firm grounding in the basic physical, ecological, and social science as well as its interactions with history, philosophy and the arts. Based in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the minor is available to all Cornell undergraduates.
The minor is offered collaboratively with classes across campus coordinated by Peter Hess (BEE/CALS), Christy Goodale (EEB/A+S), Natalie Mahowald (EAS/ENG), Karen Pinkus (COML/A+S) and David Wolfe (HORT/CALS). This coordinating committee can add or subtract courses from this list, based on proposals by professors or students. The minor is administered by the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
A brief meeting with one of the climate change coordinating faculty as you plan your minor is required. During your final semester (or earlier if you have already completed your minor requirements), you should submit a completed climate change minor certification form to Sierra Henry in 2102 Snee Hall for approval. Please contact Sierra Henry (slh297@cornell.edu) with any questions about the minor certification process and to obtain the climate change minor certification form.
Contacts:
Curricular topics: Natalie Mahowald (nmm63@cornell.edu)
Administration: Sierra Henry (slh297@cornell.edu)
Minor Requirements (Pre-Fall 2022)
Many courses across Cornell deal with the multi-facets of climate change. The minor is structured such that students without prerequisites can obtain the minor, thus enabling students from most any major at Cornell to obtain the minor. If the minor requirements change during a student's time at Cornell, the student may request to complete the minor under the old requirements. To do so, the student should contact Sierra Henry (slh297@cornell.edu).
This minor requires that students complete at least 18 credits of appropriate coursework as follows:
1. BEE 2000 Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge (1 credit spring seminar consisting of public lectures on climate change)
2. At least one course in each of the following categories:
Category 1: Physical Science Behind Climate Change
Category 2: Ecosystems and Climate Change
Category 3: Humans and Climate Change
3. Additional courses to meet the 18 credit requirement, chosen from the broad list (Categories 1-4) below.
Category 1: Physical Science Behind Climate Change
- BEE/EAS 4800 Our Changing Atmosphere: Global Change and Atmospheric Chemistry**
- DSOC/EAS 4443/5443 Global Climate Change Science and Policy*
- EAS 1600 Environmental Physics*
- EAS 2680 Climate and Global Warming*
- EAS/NTRES 3030 Introduction to Biogeochemistry**
- EAS 3050 Climate Dynamics**
- EAS/MAE 6480 Air Quality and Atmospheric Chemistry**
- EAS 4860: Tropical Meteorology and Climate
Category 2: Ecosystems and Climate Change
a. Water resources
- BEE 3710 Physical Hydrology for Ecosystems
- NTRES 3240 Sustainable, Ecologically Based Management of Water Resources*
- NTRES 6240 Sustainable Water Resource Management in the Face of Climate Change*
b. Ecosystems
- BIOEE 1610 Introductory Biology: Ecology and the Environment*
- BIOEE/NTRES 2670 Introduction to Conservation Biology*
- BIOEE/EAS 4620 Marine Ecosystem Sustainability***
- BIOEE 4780 Ecosystem Biology and Global Change***
- NTRES 2010 Environmental Conservation* (non-science majors only)
- NTRES 3220 Global Biodiversity***
- EAS 3340 Microclimatology**
- NTRES 4200 Forest Ecology***
- PLSCS 4660 Soil Ecology***
c. Agriculture
- ENTOM/PLHRT 4730 Ecology of Agriculture Systems***
- PLSCI 3600 Climate Change and the Future of Food***
- PLSCS 2600 Soil Science*
- PLSCS 3210 Soil and Crop Management for Sustainability
Category 3: Humans and Climate Change
- AEM 1500 An Introduction to the Economics of Environmental and Natural Resources*
- AEM 2500 Environmental and Resource Economics*
- AEM 2550 Corporate Sustainability: Business in a Resource-Constrained World*
- AEM 4090 Environmental Finance and Markets
- AEM 4515 Business and Economics of Energy
- AMST/BSOC/HIST 2581 Environmental History*
- ANTHR/ARKEO/CLASS 2729 Climate, Archaeology and History*
- BSOC 2061/PHIL 2960/STS 2061 Ethics and the Environment*
- BSOC/DSOC/NTRES/STS 3311 Environmental Governance*
- COGST/DEA/PSYCH 1500 Introduction to Environmental Psychology*
- COML/EAS/ROMS 2021 Humans and Climate Change*
- CRP 3011 Ethics, Development, and Globalization*
- CRP 3840 Green Cities*
- CRP 3850/5850 Special Topics in Planning (Topic Title: Urban Adaptation to Climate Change)*
- DSOC 2050/SOC 2206 International Development*
- DSOC 3240/SOC 3240/STS 3241 Environment Sociology*
- DSOC/EAS 4443/5443 Global Climate Change Science and Policy*
- ECE 2500/ENGRG 2500/HIST 2500/STS 2501 Technology in Society*
- ECE 3600/ENGRG 3600/STS 3601 Ethical Issues in Engineering Practice*
- ECON 3850/PAM 3670/ PAM 5970 Economics and Environmental Policy*
- HIST 4131 Comparative Environmental History
- ILRIC 4313 Work, Labor, and the Climate Change*
- NTRES 2500 Climate Change Science, Communication, and Action*
- NTRES 3240 Sustainable, Ecologically Based Management of Water Resources*
- NTRES 3330 Ways of Knowing: Indigenous and Place-Based Ecological Knowledge*
- NTRES 3800 Climate Solutions*
- NTRES 4300 Environmental Policy Processes II*
- NTRES 6240 Sustainable Water Resource Management in the Face of Climate Change*
- NTRES 3320 Introduction to Ethics and the Environment*
- DSOC 3150 Climate Change & Global Development: Living in the Anthropocene
- ENGL 3795 Communicating Climate Change
- ANTHR 2482 Anthropology of Climate Change
- HIST 4262 Environmental Justice: Past, Present, Future
Category 4: Miscellaneous Climate Change Courses
a. Cross-Disciplinary Courses
- BEE 2010 Perspectives on the Climate Change Challenge Discussion*
- BIOEE/EAS 1540 Introductory Oceanography*
- EAS 1101 Climate and Energy - a 21st Century Earth Science Perspective*
- ANSX 4880: Global Food, Energy, and Water Nexus – Engage the US, China, and India for Sustainability
b. Sustainable Energy
- CEE/ENGRI 1130 Sustainable Engineering of Energy, Water, Soil, and Air Resources*
- CEE 4210 Renewable Energy Systems
- CEE 4650 Transportation, Energy, and the Environment
- CHEME 6650 Energy Engineering
- CHEME 6660 Analysis of Sustainable Energy Systems
- PLBIO 2400 Green World, Blue Planet
Note: courses marked with a * have minimal prerequisites (most students should be able to take). Courses marked with ** only require 1 year of math, physics or chemistry (most students in engineering or physical science should be able to take). Courses marked with *** require 1 semester of biology (students in life sciences should be able to take). Courses without asterisks may have multiple prerequisites.
If a student would like a new course to be considered for the minor, they should email Professor Natalie Mahowald (nmm63@cornell.edu) and Sierra Henry (slh297@cornell.edu) with the course syllabus and a statement from the instructor indicating that at least 20% of the course content is about climate change. Only Cornell classes, and some transfer classes, count towards the minor. AP credit cannot be used towards the minor. No more than 3 unstructured credits can count towards the minor.
Academic Standards
At least C- in each course, or, for S/U only courses, S.