FALL 2025 COURSES

SPECIAL TOPICS COURSE DESCRIPTIONS:

AM 252 Hudson River Culture

Instructor: Gregory Pfitzer

This course is designed to introduce students to the culture of the Hudson River Valley. It deals with the Hudson River as an environmental entity, an economic and political concern, and especially as a cultural symbol. The focus will be on local and national. Students will be asked to consider how popular and official attitudes toward the Hudson have reflected changing cultural priorities for residents of the valley and for the national at large. The course begins with indigenous cultures and extends to the present, but the focus will be on the nineteenth-century experience, since it was in that century that the Hudson had its greatest influence on regional and national history. In the early nineteenth century the Hudson was projected as the center of American commerce, a vital link between the mercantile East and the agrarian old Northwest. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was an economic backwater of sorts, a loser in the competition with the railroad for new and more diverse markets. One of the goals of this course will be to account for these historical changes.

ES 252D Landscape Dynamics

Instructor: M. Gaige

The contemporary landscape is shaped by natural processes and human activities of the past. Beginning with the most recent glaciation ending ~12,000 years ago and ranging up to current land protection and conservation efforts, students will explore how the Saratoga region (broadly defined) came to be organized the way it has, why species occur where they do, and how land has developed as it has. Focus will be given to substrate conditions created by geological processes, natural ecological communities, and the past 300 years of agriculture and land use change. The framework established in this course will allow students to approach any landscape or region through its deep history and the dynamic interplay between the physical, biological, and cultural landscapes. There will be lab work and field trips.

Fulfills the B1 lab requirement

Prerequisite: ES 100

ES 252D Introduction to GIS

Instructor: N. Menkiti

An introduction to the concepts and principles of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for computerized mapping and spatial analysis in the social and natural sciences. Students will be introduced to major concepts and principles of GIS, become versed in the types of problems and analyses that GIS can be used to address and perform, and create effective presentations of geospatial information. Students will define a problem in spatial analysis, obtain relevant data from online sources, and use geoprocessing operations to produce quality maps. The course is designed to enable students to be self-sufficient, project-oriented GIS users.

Prerequisites: Placement at the AQR level or completion of an FQR course. Fulfills AQR requirement and ESS methods requirement. 

ES 252D Marine Ecology and Conservation

Instructor: T. Chase

A multidisciplinary perspective on marine science concepts and principles of oceanography, marine ecology, and conservation of various marine systems, including intertidal zones, seagrass habitats, coral reefs, and open ocean ecosystems. Application of marine conservation approaches and management will be discussed in relation to measuring and safeguarding biodiversity, and scientific principles will be applied to policy-based solutions, management approaches, and science communication. Independent and group exercises will investigate research methodologies and quantification of data related to ocean anthropogenic/environmental stressors (including climate change and marine pollution), as well as a range of science communication outputs. Weekday or weekend field trips may be involved.

Fulfills the Environmental Science core course requirement and the B2 lab requirement

Prerequisites: ES 105 or BI 108

ES 352D Urban Planning

Instructor: T. Fabozzi

This course will examine the theory and practice of urban planning in the United States, the evolving structure of cities and suburbs and the ways they can be designed and developed. It will include a review of the dominant planning paradigms and how they have changed over time in response to social, economic, and environmental conditions within the American political framework. The course will examine planning as a community process and professional activity, including an evaluation of its successes, failures, and possibilities for shaping sustainable metropolitan regions.

Fulfills the Cluster A requirement

Prerequisites: ES 100