Curricular Innovation "Coupled Human and Natural Systems Graduate course"

I propose an interdisciplinary graduate course “Introduction to Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS)”. This course would help the students interested in interdisciplinary research develop the understanding of human and nature interactions as coupled dynamics with important feedbacks between the two types of systems and acquire basic skills to analyze CHANS with various scientific methods. The suggested course structure includes 1) the lecture and discussion components which synthesizes existing knowledge about CHANS, introduces theoretical concepts and promotes understanding of class material by using various scientific case studies; 2) the lab component in which the students will be introduced to various analytical and modeling tools which can be used in analysis of CHANS and 3) class project, in which the students develop a scientific research proposal and implement their own project on a specific question involving CHANS (which may be a part of student’s graduate thesis research).