The Colorado Internet Center for Environmental Problem Solving

University Environmental Course Listings

Reporting of Public Affairs

Covers problems and practice in reporting news of government, politics, the courts, industry, business, science, and other areas involving public issues.

Media Ethics and Professional Practice

Provides a theoretical framework within which to spot and analyze ethical issues in the mass media. It will awaken students to ethical issues, allow students to question the profession's conventional wisdom; and teach students how to change those conventions.

Mass Communication Criticism

Designed to introduce students to the critical perspectives most often employed in qualitative media analysis: semiology, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalytic criticism, sociological criticism, etc. Students work with texts from contemporary print and broadcast media.

Mass Communication Law

Studies state and federal laws and court decisions that affect mass communication in order to develop knowledge of mass media rights and responsibilities and an understanding of the legal system.

Mass Communication and Public Opinion

Topics include opinion-shaping role of the mass media, theories of public opinion and propaganda, polling, communications effects, and communication theories.

Media Ethics and Responsibility

Develops a theoretical framework with which to recognize and analyze ethical issues as they arise in the mass media.

Reporting on the Environment

Environmental reporting is among the most interesting and challenging beats because it requires a broad understanding of science, technology, economics, politics, and culture. One way to get a handle on this boundless subject is to study a particular system from a variety of perspectives. The main focus of this class will be on Boulder's water supply system. This will include field trips and mock news conferences.

Science Writing Seminar

This seminar will explore ways to improve public understanding of science and technology. The goal is not to transform students of science into journalists or journalists into scientists. Both journalists and scientists will become more aware of the needs and problems of accurately communicating with each other and with various segments of the public. Science writing differs from technical writing in the audience it seeks to address. Science writers write for a general audience in a way all people may understand. Technical writers write across scientific and technical disciplines for a scientific or technical audience.

Reporting on the Environment

Environmental reporting is among the most interesting and challenging beats because it requires a broad understanding of science, technology, economics, politics, and culture. One way to get a handle on this boundless subject is to study a particular system from a variety of perspectives. The main focus of this class will be on Boulder's water supply system. This will include field trips and mock news conferences.

Analyzing Society

Examines U. S. society in global context, using basic sociological ideas. Focuses on the nature of group life, social and moral order, social institutions, social disorganization, social problems, and social change. Approved for arts and science core curriculum: contemporary societies.

Global Human Ecology

Examines global survival issues and human values. Focuses on such problems as overpopulation, world hunger and poverty, pollution, resource shortages, environmental impact of technology and population dynamics, public policy, and strategies for change.

Ethics and Social Issues in U. S. Health and Medicine

Explores current ethical and policy issues in U. S. health and medical practices. Includes such issues as alcohol and drug abuse, organ transplants and substitutes, genetic engineering, contraception, abortion, occupational safety and health, and euthanasia. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: ideals and values.

Social Conflict and Social Values

Explores origin, escalation, and resolution of social conflict. Focuses on major conflict theories, human values, and social action, and use of simulation and negotiation exercises for learning conflict management skills. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies or ideals and values.

Contemporary Social Issues and Human Values

Explores contemporary societies on a global scale. Focuses on such issues as capitalism , socialism, race and ethnic problems, sex discrimination, poverty and the concentration of wealth, crime and deviance, human rights and human values, peace and war.

Sociology of Natural and Social Environments

Sociological interpretation of the increasingly traumatic interaction of ecological and social systems in the Rocky Mountain west, where the natural environment is impacted by recreation and energy development.

Nonviolence and the Ethics of Social Action

Examines nonviolence as a strategy of social action. Focuses on ethics and dynamics of nonviolent action; racial and economic justice movements; civil disobedience; and conscientious objection to war.

U. S. Values, Social Problems, and Social Change

Examines U. S. society from the perspective of values and theories of social change. Considers such problems as distribution of power, unemployment, poverty, racism and sexism, the changing role of the family, and drugs. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: ideals and values.

Sociological Analysis of Revolution

Comparative analysis of major revolutions emphasizing causation, revolutionary process, and long-term consequences. Attention given to social stratification, political organization, economic processes, ideological systems, and international relations.

Sociology of Peacemaking

Analyzes institutions of war and the forces emerging to counter them, such as negotiation, nonviolent national defense, and peace movements.

Social Relations

Improves students' abilities to observe, analyze, and understand their own behavior and that of others; improves their ability to see the small group as asocial system. Students are expected to demonstrate their abilities by participation in groups as well as written analyses.

Environmental and Society

Focuses on influences of both natural and built environments upon human behavior and social organization; microenvironments and their influence on individuals; the impact of macroenvironments on societal organization; and environmental movements.

Social Change

Studies historically and cross-culturally the causes of modernization and its effects upon the individual, the family, and economic and political institutions.

Sociology of Language

More than anything else, it is the fact that humans use language that makes them what they are. Course focuses on language in its social context, and what happens when people talk.

Social Movement in the U. S.

The philosophical foundations, new values, motivations for joining, leadership, strategies, organization dynamics, public response, and reasons for success and failure of social movements are the primary foci. A look at organized attempts to contest traditional ideas and values regarding the relationship of human organization and activities to various movements.

Sociology of War

Considers the questions war raises by applying sociological theory and methods to armed conflicts from the Peloponnesian War to the Gulf War.

Theories of Conflict

Discusses theories about causes of conflict, its consequences, and methods of conflict resolution. Examples are drawn from the fields of small groups, community conflict, and international disputes. Explores relationship between the theory of conflict resolution and its practices, such as mediation.

Conflict Management in Social Systems

The destructiveness of intractable confrontations has called forth considerable effort in conflict management along two lines: 1) the application of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques to limit transaction costs and transform intractable conflicts into ones resolvable with interest-based bargaining; 2) empowerment efforts to facilitate the pursuit of justice through community-building, power-based advocacy, and even intentional escalation. In this course, we will study how and why intractable conflicts are different from more tractable disputes, and how both can be handle more effectively. We will first review alternative dispute resolution methods, and then compare them with supplementary processes designed specifically for moderating intractable conflicts. Explores conflict resolution theory and method as applied to interpersonal, intergroup, and interorganization conflict.

Topics in Social Conflict

Visiting conflict management specialists examine the theory/practice relationship from the perspective of the professional third-party neutral. Explores family disputes, environmental and resource conflict, and international and civil wars.

The Colorado Internet Center for Environmental Problem Solving Main Home Page -- Main Conflict Research Consortium Home Page

For more information contact: Guy Burgess, Co-Director, Conflict Research Consortium, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0327 Phone: (303)492-1635; Fax: (303)492-2154; E-Mail: crc@colorado.eduCopyright 1997 by Conflict Research Consortium