SMCM graduates who major or minor in Environmental Studies will:
- Understand range of techniques and theories for measuring, monitoring, managing, and responding to natural environments during different time periods, across diverse cultures, and on local, regional, and global scales.
- Develop facility with theoretical and applied concepts in the related natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and be able to advance the interdisciplinary connections between these subjects.
- Use critical thinking and effective written and oral communication to interpret, argue, present, and parlay complex environmental issues for multiple audiences.
- To interpret and communicate information related to environmental issues befitting informed ecological and cultural literacy.
- To possess the scholarly rigor from the natural and social sciences to correctly identify which methodological tools and qualitative / quantitative perspectives are appropriate for addressing particular environmental questions and are able to manage the quality and kinds of available data and evidence by demonstrating ability to balance uncertainty and risk in environmental decision making.
- Apply a comparative framework for environmental problem solving and use interdisciplinary methodology in research and action.
- To recognize the scientific, political, economic, cultural, and social complexities inherent in environmental problem solving.
- Acquire and cultivate a life-long curiosity about and commitment to environmental issues and the greater good.
- Apply a comprehension of ethics and social justice in their assessments of and responses to environmental challenges. Graduating students should be able to identify the moral dimensions of environmental issues, frame solutions using ethical reasoning, and articulate how social justice is integral to sustainability.
- Develop a familiarity with the professional practices of environmental careers, either as preparation for advanced degree work or employment in environmental field.
- Graduating students should demonstrate the leadership skills necessary to promote a more just, humane, and sustainable world.