This assignment was designed for students in the pathways introductory chemistry class and the first year seminar and aligns with the Inquiry and Problem Solving core competency. In this context, there is a focus on framing the issues (identifies and/or addresses questions and problems), evidence gathering (assembles, reviews and synthesizes evidence from several diverse sources), evidence (analyze the data to address the questions posed) and conclusions (critical thinking, reflect on the outcomes, draw conclusions and generate new knowledge). There is also a Global Learning component based on comparing data collected locally with corresponding data from other locations or countries. The assignment includes the written communication ability with a focus on "Content Development and Organization," as well as the clarity of the communication and its purpose. The overall aim of this assignment is to enhance students' conceptual learning and understanding of key issues related to society as well as their course. This assignment was developed as part of a LaGuardia Global Learning mini-grant and CUNY Experiential Learning and Research in the Classroom mini-grants.
The assignment will be scaffolded over about 3 weeks and is worth about 10% of the final grade.
To further increase the success of this assignment, instructors might want to consider the following: Use class discussions to focus on the relevance and importance of conceptual learning. In order to improve the data analysis aspect, incorporating class demonstrations of how to conduct the analysis and guide discussions about what the data means. Giving students more detailed rubrics with formal expectations of the requirements of the assignments, particularly in the written format Find ways to increase student participation in class discussions.
When this assignment has been utilized in previous semesters, students clearly displayed the capability to relate the co-curricular experiences in the data collection and its analysis to concepts and ideas covered during class. Evidence for this came from very dynamic and interactive class discussions based on air pollution as well as from the output of the written assignment, in which students were able to relate the nature, sources and chemical properties of the pollutants to their impact on the environment, health and society in general.
LaGuardia's Core Competencies and Communication Abilities
List the Program Goal(s) that this assignment targets
Global Learning based on comparing pollutant levels around the LaGuardia campus with those in other locations or countries. It is also an IPS assignment, incorporating scientific literacy and thinking, as students need to analyze the data, interpret it and reflect on the outcomes.
List the Student Learning Objective(s) that this assignment targets
Identify and apply fundamental chemical concepts and methods. Gather, analyze, and interpret data.
List the Course Objectives(s) that this assignment targets
Explore the complex connections between chemistry and society. Apply chemical principles to real world issues, including ethical aspects. Gather, analyze, and interpret data.
Write a short description of the pedagogy involved in executing this assignment
Students collect and analyze the data, interpret the results in terms of pollution levels, safety and ethics and compare with EPA standard levels and with levels in other countries.
Outside the classroom events will be organized for data collection. There will be class and group-based discussions focused on the data, its analysis and the connections to society.

The trifecta of globalization, urbanization and digitization have created new opportunities and challenges across our nation, cities, boroughs and urban centers. Cities are in a unique position at the center of commerce and technology becoming hubs for innovation and practical application of emerging technology. In this rapidly changing 24/7 digitized world, city governments worldwide are leveraging innovation and technology to become more effective, efficient, transparent and to be able to better plan for and anticipate the needs of its citizens, businesses and community organizations. This class will provide the framework for how cities and communities can become smarter and more accessible with technology and more connected.

This book is based upon the edX MOOCs Engineering: Building with Nature and Beyond Engineering: Building with Nature. The Engineering: Building with Nature MOOC, explores the use of natural materials and ecological processes in achieving effective and sustainable hydraulic infrastructure designs, distilling Engineering and Ecological Design Principles. In the Beyond Engineering: Building with Nature course, the missing element of Social Design Principles is developed and taught.

Join us in exploring the interface between hydraulic engineering, nature and society!

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the, if not the most, pressing issues of our times. The problems that it causes range across many social and environmental domains from habitat and species loss and displacement to the more human and social concerns and issues of access to water, sea level rise that affects coastal communities, to economic degradation as a result of the aforementioned and other connected issues such as increased frequency of storms, droughts, wildfires, and the like. We also know that the affects of climate change are not distributed evenly across populations- that many will and do feel the negative effects of this slow developing problem earlier and more intensely than others based on where they are located both geographically and within economic and other socio-cultural hierarchies. We also know that recently, there is a marked effort to begin to move away from simply decrying the horrors of climate change to a continued recognition of those horrors as they exist now and into the future alongside attempts to begin to come to terms with the changing climate and to rethink the ways that our social and environmental relations and communities are organized with an eye toward both adapting to these changes and mitigating further damage. There is, however, much work to be done. This book was co-authored by undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute while exploring the influences of Earth systems and human systems on climate change and the communities at most risk in an interdisciplinary project-based first year course. This course attempts to bring together knowledge of the science of ecological and climate systems and their changing status with knowledge of the social and communal structures within which these systems are embedded and through which they have been influenced. The book highlights key interests and insights of current students in their quest to think through these issues and to create a better world.

Anthropogenic climate change is one of the, if not the most, pressing issues of our times. The problems that it causes range across many social and environmental domains from habitat and species loss and displacement to the more human and social concerns and issues of access to water, sea-level rise that affects coastal communities, to economic degradation as a result of the aforementioned and other connected issues such as increased frequency of storms, droughts, wildfires, and the like. We also know that the effects of climate change are not distributed evenly across populations- that many will and do feel the negative effects of this slow-developing problem earlier and more intensely than others based on where they are located both geographically and within economic and other socio-cultural hierarchies. We also know that recently, there is a marked effort to begin to move away from simply decrying the horrors of climate change to a continued recognition of those horrors as they exist now and into the future alongside attempts to begin to come to terms with the changing climate and to rethink the ways that our social and environmental relations and communities are organized with an eye toward both adapting to these changes and mitigating further damage. There is, however, much work to be done. This book was co-authored by undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute while exploring the influences of Earth systems and human systems on climate change and the communities at most risk in an interdisciplinary project-based first year course. This course attempts to bring together knowledge of the science of ecological and climate systems and their changing status with knowledge of the social and communal structures within which these systems are embedded and through which they have been influenced. The book highlights key interests and insights of current students in their quest to think through these issues and to create a better world.

Table of Contents
Part I. Climate Systems
1. Atmosphere
2. Hydrosphere
3. Cryosphere and Lithosphere
4. Biosphere
Part II. Social Impacts of Climate Change
5. Climate Change Impacts on Food Systems
6. The Societal Impacts of Climate Change on Water Resources
7. Climate Change Impacts on Human Health
8. Inequalities Due to Climate Change
Part III. Communities and Climate Change
9. Puerto Rico
10. Boston
11. The Himalayas
12. Fiji
Part IV. In Search of Solutions
13. Rigged for Oil Rigs
14. Climate Change Impacts on Native Hawaiian Population
15. Destigmatizing Nuclear Energy to Decarbonize the Worlds' Power Supply
16. Small Scale Carbon Capture Implementation and Utilization

A well-crafted and executed storytelling assignment can serve as an efficient and engaging learning activity which targets the three highest levels of Blooms‰Ûª taxonomy which are to Create, Evaluate and Analyze. This digital storytelling assignment is part of a signature assignment series (Stage 1) conducted in all courses of the First Year Seminar for Natural Sciences (NSF101). Students begin collecting pictures and videos for their assignment from the 3rd week of the semester on a flash drive. During the fourth week of the semester, the instructor first describes the storytelling process and stages. This is followed by learning around how storytelling can be used as a narrative, to foster inquiry learning, content-based information.
In studio hour, the First Year Seminar Student Success Mentors enable students to familiarize themselves with the digital tools necessary to create their digital stories such as iMovie, narrated PowerPoint, Prezi and Powtoon (to name a few). Next, students submit a draft of their scripts, which is edited by the professor, and then students submit their final digital story. The prompts for the script ask students to reflect on their journey thus far and project forward into their future career aspirations. It also asks them to connect their content learning between courses and co-curricular experiences. The prompts within the assignment directly articulate the Student Learning Objectives of the Biology and Environmental Science Program (please see Table 1) Students complete this assignment within ePortolio assignment templates. Link to the assignment template can be found here https://lagcc-cuny.digication.com/nsf101-digital-storytelling/home-1.
This assignment has been through multiple assignment development and revision charrettes as part of the Programmatic Integration Meeting in the Natural Sciences Department funded by the Learning Matters mini-grants from the Center for Teaching and Learning at LaGuardia Community College.
LaGuardia‰Ûªs Core Competencies and Communication Abilities

The syllabus for EVST 104: Ecosphere and Environmental Issues, as taught at Randolph College.

Rapid changes at Earth's surface, largely in response to human activity, have led to the realization that fundamental questions remain to be answered regarding the natural functioning of the Critical Zone, the thin veneer at Earth's surface where the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere interact. EARTH 530 will introduce you to the basics necessary for understanding Earth surface processes in the Critical Zone through an integration of various scientific disciplines. Those who successfully complete EARTH 530 will be able to apply their knowledge of fundamental concepts of Earth surface processes to understanding outstanding fundamental questions in Critical Zone science and how their lives are intimately linked to Critical Zone health.

Our planet is becoming hot. In fact, Earth may be warming faster than ever before. This warming will challenge society throughout the 21st century. How do we cope with rising seas? How will we prepare for more intense hurricanes? How will we adapt to debilitating droughts and heat waves? Scientists are striving to improve predictions of how the environment will change and how it will impact humans. Earth in the Future: Predicting Climate Change and Its Impacts Over the Next Century is designed to provide the state of the art of climate science, the impact of warming on humans, as well as ways we can adapt. Every student will understand the challenges and opportunities of living in the 21st century.

This textbook is designed for introductory environmental studies and science students. The goal is to teach essential ecological concepts by linking them to key environmental issues. The hope is that students can easily understand how firm grounding in these concepts can help them appreciate and hopefully address the biggest environmental threats of our time. After an initial section on the nature of science and an overview of ecology, the textbook is divided into four sections, each addressing a key environmental concern: global climate change, eutrophication, biodiversity loss and food supply and security. After a brief introduction to the environmental concern, the book addresses ecological concepts relevant for understanding the issue. Each section wraps up with a return to the environmental concern and insight into how the ecological concepts learned can be applied to the environmental issue.

This open textbook covers the most salient environmental issues, from a biological perspective. The text is designed for an introductory-level college science course. Topics include the fundamentals of ecology, biodiversity, pollution, climate change, food production, and human population growth.

Lecture slides for each chapter are available from https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/119oj6XXHnQMpwu_rCgczDFrZPMbqGN8W

Short Description:
In this volume, Erika Allen Wolters and Brent Steel have brought together the experts who can explain the evolution of public lands policies and politics in all their complexities. While their subject is complex, their prose is clear, and while their subject is torn by some of the most viciously self-interested, deceitful arguments in politics today, their prose is calm, factual, and evenhanded. No one should underestimate what a rare and valuable gift this is. Data dashboard

Word Count: 113766

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Environmental science draws on knowledge and methods from many fields of the sciences and social sciences, including biology, chemistry, economics, ethics, geography, geology, medicine, physics, political science, sociology, and statistics. Many environmental specialists adopt an interdisciplinary approach to integrate these different ways of knowing in order to help understand and prevent environmental damage. This book also adopts an interdisciplinary approach by drawing on a variety of disciplines. At the same time, however, the choice of topics and the interpretations offered reflect my own experience and world view as an ecologist – one who has had a rather specialized career examining the ecological dimensions of environmental problems.

This open online textbook on Environmental Toxicology aims at covering the field in its full width, including aspects of environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology, toxicology and risk assessment. With that, it will contribute to improving the quality, continuity and transparency of the education in environmental toxicology. We also want to make sure that fundamental insights on fate and effects of chemicals gained in the past are combined with recent approaches of effect assessment and molecular analysis of mechanisms causing toxicity.

The causes and consequences of global biodiversity loss and species extinctions are complex and rapidly changing across spatial and temporal scales. They have both local and global manifestations and are entangled with biological, socio-cultural, economic, and political processes. Many of these challenges demand novel approaches, including innovative research and interdisciplinary analysis. They need new skills and methods from various disciplines and expert communities, including the humanities, social sciences, and biophysical sciences. They also require rethinking who conducts research and communicates findings and how knowledge is produced at the intersection of research and higher education institutions and social change. 

This book aims to respond to these challenges. Extinction Stories was co-authored by undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, a private research university in Worcester, Massachusetts (USA), while exploring issues of extinction, environmental conservation, and biodiversity loss. The following twenty chapters combine the final projects conducted by students in the Great Problem Seminar (GPS) Extinctions course during the Fall of 2020 and the Biodiversity course in the Spring of 2021. Both courses took place while the world was still facing the impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic—a global crisis that, as our current sixth mass extinction, is also profoundly rooted in long-lasting processes of habitat destruction and human-induced environmental change.

This text may also be accessed at extinctionstories.pressbooks.com/.

Fish, Fishing, and Conservation is a 389-page, peer-reviewed open textbook intended for undergraduate students who are exploring majors in Fish & Wildlife. It is also relevant to a general audience or for use in courses which explore social and ethical aspects of fish, fishing and conservation.

People, places, and approaches to fishing are as varied as the diverse fish fauna that exist on the planet. As conservation planners recognize the value of substantial engagement of stakeholders in decision making and ineffectiveness of rigid top-down management approaches, Fish, Fishing, and Conservation asserts that all peoples must play a role in conservation. Through case studies, engaging narrative and graphics, and exercises, the text explores major motivations for fishing and non-fishing related values, responsible fisheries practices, the rights of all people to decide how to manage and conserve fish, their habitats, and how they are utilized in the context of overfishing as a pressing global problem for which appropriate solutions are not easily found nor implemented. Introductory chapters examine fish, fishing, and why fish matter and examine the role of values in driving conservation initiatives. Fish and their unique sensory capabilities are described along with a review of recent studies to examine issues of pain, sentience, and learning in fishes living in a foreign, underwater world. The text incorporates these new findings in conservation and management leading readers to evaluate and adopt suitable approaches to ethical reasoning which consider the welfare needs of wild and cultured fishes. Later chapters focus on the role of gender in fishing, conservation organizations, recreational fishing, and a focus on specific fisheries that reveal the principles of conservation and management as they play out in major controversies. Additionally, the textbook contains audio recordings of professional profiles by Virginia Tech students. These are linked at the beginning of each end-of-chapter Professional Profile. Audio recordings are also available on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/06SnqAigflPXUgGNIHZxAX?si=Sljj3q9NRyOcclbmEE3npA

Please let us know if you are reviewing or adopting this book https://bit.ly/fishandconservation_interest

Table of Contents
1. Fish, Fishing, and Why They Matter
2. Values Drive Fish Conservation
3. Sensory Capabilities of Fish
4. Ethical Reasoning and Conservation Planning
5. Pain, Sentience, and Animal Welfare
6. Public Aquariums and Their Role in Education, Science, and Conservation
7. Gender and Fishing
8. Angling and Conservation of Living Fishy Dinosaurs
9. Fly Fishing’s Legacy for Conservation
10. Recreational Fishing and Keep Fish Wet
11. Integrating Fishers in the Management of Arapaima
12. Conserving Tunas: The Most Commercially Valuable Fish on Earth
13. Groupers and Spawning Aggregations
14. Menhaden and Forage Fish Management
15. Takeaways for Successful Fish Conservation

This module is developed for High school students . This module is about water pollution, its types and its effect on health and environment.

General Chemistry is a two-semester course (General Chemistry I, SCC 201 and General Chemistry II, SCC 202) required for majors in Biology and Environmental Sciences.
This lab experiment, aligned to LaGuardia Community College‰Ûªs Inquiry and Problem Solving Core Competency and Written Communication Ability was designed for General Chemistry I (SCC 201 Honors) course. Honors courses in LaGuardia emphasize critical thinking, analytical writing, and introduce students to research. This lab experiment provides an opportunity for students to engage in hands-on laboratory work, to develop laboratory skills, and to conduct research in the classroom by using two water soluble porphyrins to detect transition metal ions in a solution and on a paper support. Overall, this experiment was designed to meet the demand for undergraduate research experiences and to engage all the students in addressing a research question or problem that is of interest to the scientific community.
In order to demonstrate their learning, students write a formal lab report which includes an understanding of experiment procedures (methods and techniques), safety hazards, instrumentation, understanding of concepts and theories gained by performing the experiment, collecting data through observation and/or experimentation, interpretation of the data (Ultraviolet-visible spectra), analysis of the data in tables and graphs, and drawing conclusions and perspective from the experiment. The knowledge students gain during this lab experiment will be useful to connect with future chemistry courses and can also be utilized to do research. The lab write-up is deposited for the assessment of the Written Communication Ability to which SCC 201 is aligned.
This experiment also raises awareness about a global concern. Students detect transition metal ions in aqueous solutions by use of porphyrins. Due to rapid growth in technology and industrialization, transition metals are used in large amounts in a variety of electronic products. The improper preservation of the industrial wastes leads to accumulation of these metals into water resources, which can create danger to human health and the environment. Therefore, there is a need to carefully monitor and frequently detect transition metal ions content in the environment.
This lab experiment was implemented in an Honors section of General Chemistry SCC 201 and was worth about 3.5% of the final grade. The students are likely to spend 3 hours completing the experiment in the lab and another 3-4 hours completing the lab write-up.
The Program Goals that this assignment targets:
1. To provide training to the students in various lab techniques and how to utilize these techniques to conduct research.
The Student Learning Objective (s) that this assignment targets:
1. Students will have an enhanced conceptual understanding of the theory to practice relationship and will achieve higher level reasoning skills.
2. Students will be able to develop their practical competence in laboratory work.
3. Students will be able to collect data through observation and/or experimentation, preparation of solutions of known concentration, characterize the compounds by UV-vis spectra, and draw conclusions and perspective of the experiment.
4. Communicate their results through the formal lab report format of: Introduction, Chemicals, Procedure, Data, Discussion and References.
LaGuardia‰Ûªs Core Competencies and Communication Abilities
The Course Objective (s) that this assignment targets:
1. Based on the principles of environmental chemistry, students will be able to detect the transition metal ions using a porphyrin as a sensor and explore the complex connections between chemistry and real world issues.
2. Observe, collect, analyze and interpret experimental data and graph the UV visible spectra using Microsoft Excel.

This course uses the basic principles of biology and earth science as a context for understanding environmental policies and resource management practices. Our planet is facing unprecedented environmental challenges, from oil spills to global climate change. In ENSC 1000, you will learn about the science behind these problems; preparing you to make an informed, invaluable contribution to Earth’s future. I hope that each of you is engaged by the material presented and participates fully in the search for, acquisition of, and sharing of information within our class.

Short Description:
Introduction to Environmental Sciences and Sustainability is a college-level Open Educational Resource (OER) that focuses on the most relevant environmental science issues and addresses ways to incorporate sustainable practices. This resource is targeted at environmental science students.

Long Description:
Introduction to Environmental Sciences and Sustainability is a college-level Open Educational Resource (OER) that focuses on the most relevant environmental science issues and addresses ways to incorporate sustainable practices. The text is designed for an introductory-level college science course. Topics include the fundamentals of ecology, biodiversity, pollution, climate change, food production, human population growth, and incorporating sustainable approaches in our communities, economies, and environments. This resource is targeted at environmental science students.

Students can print a PDF copy of this text as a hard copy (at the student’s expense). Electronic copies of a PDF or the ebook are available through UWF’s Library Pressbook.

Contributors: Chasidy Hobbs, M.S. and Kwame Owusu-Daaku, Ph.D

Word Count: 118178

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