Fall 2011

Courses taught by SSI Team Faculty:

ECO 581 Modeling Sustainability (Fall 2011)
Mondays 3:10 to 5:40 pm
Instructor: Tim Waring
This skills-based course in the modeling of social-ecological systems, focuses providing students all the conceptual and computational tools they need to design, modify, test and build agent-based models of socio-ecological systems. It draws inspiration and theoretical perspectives from research on common pool resource dynamics, human cooperation, evolutionary game theory, and complex adaptive systems. Students will use the free, cross-platform modeling system called NetLogo to explore the dynamics of models, critique these models, modify and extend them. The semester’s work will be cumulative, and build toward student-authored socio-ecological systems models. Students will be encouraged to connect their models to either local socio-ecological systems or to socio-ecological research conducted on campus.

CMJ 593: Environmental Communication (Fall 2011)
Tuesdays 6:00 to 8:30 pm
Instructor: Laura Lindenfeld
How we communicate shapes how we make decisions about and relate to the environment, issues of sustainability, and environmental affairs. Environmental Communication examines the relationship between people and the spaces that we occupy and impact. Similarly, the field examines how we communicate about environmental and sustainability crises through government, communities, and across a wide range of media. This course provides an overview of the growing field of Environmental Communication. We will explore key texts and themes within this body of scholarship such as environmental discourse, media, public participation, collaboration and conflict resolution, and risk communication. The course will place a strong emphasis on the role of environmental communication linking the production of knowledge with action to support healthy economies, ecosystems, and communities. Students from diverse disciplines are encouraged to participate.

ECO 593 0001: Stakeholder-Researcher Partnerships (Fall 2011)
Wednesdays 3:10-5:40 pm
Instructor: Linda Silka
Research is changing. No longer do researchers work alone and independently of those who might use the research findings. Increasingly researchers work in interdisciplinary settings with stakeholders and most grant proposals require that researchers work in teams and in collaborations with stakeholders. This seminar will prepare students to work in this new world of research. Examples drawn from work on campus as well as from around the state and country will be used to provide students with hands-on training on how to build successful partnerships where the research will make a difference!

Other sustainability related courses:

SMS 598: Maine's Working Coast: The Intersection of Science, Policy and Community (Fall 2011)
Tuesdays 1:00-4:00 pm
Contact: Paul Anderson
This three credit course will be team-taught by staff from Maine Sea Grant and the Marine Extension Team. Marine Extension Team members live and work in Maine’s coastal communities from Wells to Eastport, where they conduct applied research, community engagement, and group process with a wide range of stakeholders on many of the issues facing the Maine Coast. Panels of industry members and other stakeholders will participate in each class.