Environmental Studies is an interdisciplinary program based on a holistic understanding of environmental issues occurring at the local, national, and global level.  The program offers students tools and perspectives from the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences to understand the causes and consequences of environmental problems and the knowledge to develop potential solutions.

What's New

• Climate Scientist, Louisa Bradtmiller, Joins the Environmental Studies Department - The Environmental Studies Department would like to welcome and introduce our new tenure-track Climate Scientist, Louisa Bradtmiller.  Louisa is a graduate of Smith College and has completed an M.A. and M.Phil at Columbia University.  She is completing her PhD in Geochemistry at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia.  She will undertake post-doctoral research at Lamont-Doherty before joining us in Fall 2009.  Louisa’s research exams paleoproductivity changes in the equatorial and southern oceans during the last glacial maximum, and their possible linkage to glacial-interglacial changes in atmospheric CO 2.  She is also exploring the “Glacial El Niño” Hypothesis that suggests that the equatorial Pacific region was in an extended El Niño-like state during the last glacial period.  Louisa’s research is important to the questions surrounding modern CO2 emissions by allowing us to use accurately reconstruct past mechanisms for CO2 control.  This will allow us to better understand the fate of anthropogenic CO2 in the future.  Louisa will teach Environmental Science, Climate Change, and other courses in her specialty and will participate in teaching the ES Senior Seminar.  She will also include Macalester students in her ongoing research projects.  Louisa states, “My favorite part of teaching earth and environmental science has always been the ability to change the way students view their surroundings.  Not surprisingly, understanding the landscapes and processes around me, as well as my own impact on those processes, is also what drew me to the discipline as a student."  Louisa is no stranger to Macalester:  her brother Carl graduated from Mac in 2005.
     
• Student Projects - Check out the projects from the Spring 2007 "Citizen Science: Environment, Technology and Democracy" class.