Environmental Science

First-Year Studies—Year

Ecology is a scientific discipline that studies interactions between living organisms and their environments, as well as processes governing how species are distributed, how they interact, and how nutrients and energy cycle through ecosystems. Although we may think of these processes occurring in “natural” areas with little-to-no human development, all of these processes still take place in environments heavily modified by humans, such as cities. This course will cover fundamental concepts in the discipline of ecology and then further explore how these patterns and processes are altered (sometimes dramatically) in urban environments. We will use examples from our local environment—the New York City metropolitan area—to understand ecological concepts in light of urbanization. The fall semester will include a biweekly outdoor lab session at local parks and field stations. Special attention will be paid to the ecology of local streams and rivers, including field trips and work involving the Sarah Lawrence Center for the Urban River at Beczak. Biweekly in fall, students will alternate between individual conferences with the instructor and small-group activities. Biweekly in spring, students will meet with the instructor for individual conferences. 

Faculty

• Michelle Hersh

Open, Seminar—Fall

The ocean covers more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface today and has harbored the origin of life and the vast majority of life today. It is also profoundly transformed by environmental change, both past and present. This seminar will examine how marine communities have responded to the great disturbances of geological time: mass extinctions, intervals of rapid warming and cooling, ocean acidification, and changing ocean current systems. Students will refine their research, analytical, and writing skills by combining paleontological evidence and observations of the modern system. Interactive lectures and discussions in the beginning weeks will introduce shared background information. After that, each class meeting will start with a targeted lecture on a selected group of marine organisms or an event in Earth’s history, and will end with a student-led discussion on a primary research paper related to the target topic. Conference projects will center on a literature synthesis, hands-on data analysis, or research proposal on a relevant topic of choice. No background experience in biology is required.

Faculty

• Yue Deng

Open, Seminar—Fall

Vertebrates inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains, yet they all face many of the same fundamental biological challenges. They must obtain energy, move through their environments, maintain internal balance, perceive and respond to the world around them, reproduce, and survive changing environmental conditions. Throughout evolutionary history, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals have evolved remarkably different solutions to these shared challenges. Rather than surveying vertebrates one taxonomic group at a time, this seminar will take a comparative approach to vertebrate biology by exploring the common biological problems that all vertebrates must solve. Using examples from across the vertebrate tree of life, we will examine how anatomy, physiology, behavior, ecology, and evolution interact to shape the extraordinary diversity of vertebrate life. Topics will include energy acquisition, locomotion, homeostasis, sensory biology, behavior, reproduction, environmental adaptation, ecological interactions, and the impacts of global environmental change. Readings will combine textbook chapters from Vertebrate Life with primary scientific literature, popular science writing (including selections from An Immense World), documentaries, and other multimedia resources. Through seminar discussions, individual conferences, and student-led presentations, students will develop the skills to interpret scientific research, think comparatively across taxa, and communicate biological ideas effectively.

Faculty

• Akhila Gopal

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course will be an introduction to botany with emphasis on learning plant taxonomy in the field. Readings and lectures will cover aspects of plant science including anatomy, physiology, taxonomy, food science, and ethnobotany, highlighting the importance of plants in human life. Throughout the semester, students will explore our native local flora and develop a familiarity with important plant families, genera, and species found in our area. Field walks on campus will utilize taxonomic keys to develop proficiency in botanical identification of herbaceous and woody plants, and apply techniques of plant preservation for preparing herbarium specimens. Students will also document an important ethnobotanically-utilized plant species as part of a semester-long research project.

Faculty

• Adam Negrin

Open, Seminar—Spring

This course will provide an introduction to herpetology, the study of amphibians and reptiles. Students will explore the remarkable diversity, evolution, ecology, behavior, physiology, and natural history of these animals while developing an understanding of the adaptations that have allowed them to thrive in a wide range of environments. Through lectures, discussions, readings, and hands-on activities, students will examine the major groups of amphibians and reptiles and explore topics including taxonomy, evolution, ecology, physiology, behavior, and conservation. The course may include field experiences and visits to a museum, providing opportunities to observe herpetofauna and learn about the study of amphibians and reptiles in both the wild and in preserved natural history collections.

Faculty

• Akhila Gopal

Open, Seminar—Spring

Biodiversity loss. Climate change. Habitat fragmentation. Invasive species. Global ecosystems are being altered in dramatic ways due to human activities. To address these challenges, we first need to understand them scientifically. This course will explore the impacts of global environmental change through the lens of the biological sciences. Will rising global temperatures lead to unexpected species interactions, like hybridization between polar bears and grizzly bears? How are invasive predators like Burmese pythons in Florida affecting mammal populations? How does the extensive use of fertilizers upstream in a large river affect biological communities downstream? How has overfishing altered marine biodiversity? How could urbanization and habitat loss alter the risk of disease spillover from wildlife to humans? We will use scientific journal articles and other primary sources to address these kinds of questions in this seminar course. 

Faculty

• Michelle Hersh

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

Chemistry is the study of the properties, composition, and transformation of matter. It is central to the production of the materials required for modern life. For instance, the synthesis of pharmaceuticals to treat disease, the manufacture of fertilizers and pesticides required to feed an ever growing population, and the development of efficient and environmentally benign energy sources. This course will provide an introduction to the fundamental concepts of modern chemistry. We will begin by examining the structure and properties of atoms, which are the building blocks of the elements, the simplest substances in the material world around us. We will then explore how atoms of different elements can bond with each other to form an infinite variety of more complex substances called compounds. This will lead us to an investigation of several classes of chemical reactions: the processes in which substances are transformed into new materials with different physical properties. Along the way, we will learn how and why the three states of matter (solids, liquids, and gases) differ from one another and how energy may be either produced or consumed by chemical reactions. In weekly laboratory sessions, we will perform experiments to illustrate and test the theories presented in the lecture part of the course. These experiments will also serve to develop practical skills in both synthetic and analytic chemical techniques.

Faculty

• Mali Yin

Open, Seminar—Fall

This course will examine the chemistry of our everyday life—the way things work. The emphasis of this course is on understanding everyday use of chemistry. We will introduce chemistry concepts with everyday examples, such as household chemicals and gasoline, that show how we already use chemistry and reveal why chemistry is important to us. We will concentrate on topics of current interest such as environmental pollution and the substances that we use in our daily lives that affect our environment and us.

Faculty

• Mali Yin

Intermediate, Small Lecture—Spring

This course is a continuation of General Chemistry I (CHEN 2010). We will begin with a detailed study of both the physical and chemical properties of solutions. This will enable us to consider the factors that affect both the rates and direction of chemical reactions. We will then investigate the properties of acids and bases and the role that electricity plays in chemistry. The course will conclude with introductions to nuclear chemistry and organic chemistry. Weekly laboratory sessions will allow us to demonstrate and test the theories described in the lecture segment of the course.

Faculty

• Mali Yin

Advanced, Seminar—Spring

Biochemistry is the chemistry of biological systems. This course will introduce students to the basic principles and concepts of biochemistry. Topics will include the structure and function of biomolecules such as amino acids, proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, RNA, DNA, and bioenergetics. This knowledge will then be used to study the pathways of metabolism.

Faculty

• Mali Yin

First-Year Studies—Year

The 2024 Presidential Election result will have far-reaching implications for economic, social, and environmental policies. It will also be significant in terms of the future of American democracy and social wellbeing. In this course, we will situate current economic and political challenges in a theoretical and historical context by drawing on insights from difference schools of thought in economics as well as other disciplines such as law, politics, sociology, and history. Some of the key questions to be addressed are as follows: How can the central debates in political economy help us understand some of the unprecedented challenges we face, such as new gilded age style wealth concentration and power, economic insecurity, and the climate crisis? Why is the study of history a central methodological priority for many economists and why not so for others? Why do people distinguish between “regulation” and laissez-faire and is this a false dichotomy? What is the history of industrial and social policy in the United States and other countries? How do we understand the relationship between political and corporate power and the “rule of law” with regard to market outcomes? What is Project 2025 and how can we understand its theoretical basis and implications? These and others will be some of the questions that we will be tackling throughout the course of the year, thereby ensuring that students develop a solid foundation to the fundamental debates in economic theory and policy and understand the key role of methodology in the study of political economy. Finally, the goal is to ensure that students develop the ability to critically engage scholarly work in economics. In fall until mid-semester, students will meet weekly with the instructor for individual conferences; thereafter through spring, individual conferences will be biweekly.

Faculty

• Jamee Moudud

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

As the desire to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions increases, this workshop offers an opportunity for students to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Students will work in small groups on a variety of projects and produce research and educational material that can lead to concrete and actionable proposals for the College and our community to consider. Students will determine their own areas of interest and research, from energy and water-usage monitoring to composting solutions, recycling/reusing and consumer sobriety, landscaping choices, pollinators and natural diversity, food growing, natural and human history of the land, and community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project efforts, students will engage with College administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as students, staff, and faculty groups such as the Warren Green vegetable garden, the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collective on the Environment (SLICE), and the Sustainability Committee. We will also explore the possibility of writing grants in coordination with other actors at the College. Most of the course work will happen during class time. Skills in areas of any expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing to visual and studio arts—but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice.

Faculty

• Eric Leveau

Open, Small Lecture—Spring

As the desire to engage in individual and collective efforts toward sustainable and climate-change mitigating solutions increases, this workshop offers an opportunity for students to explore the multiple ways in which “sustainability” can be fostered and developed at an institution like Sarah Lawrence College. Students will work in small groups on a variety of projects and produce research and educational material that can lead to concrete and actionable proposals for the College and our community to consider. Students will determine their own areas of interest and research, from energy and water-usage monitoring to composting solutions, recycling/reusing and consumer sobriety, landscaping choices, pollinators and natural diversity, food growing, natural and human history of the land, and community collaborations, to name a few. As part of their project efforts, students will engage with College administrators who are actively working toward sustainable solutions, as well as students, staff, and faculty groups such as the Warren Green vegetable garden, the Sarah Lawrence Interdisciplinary Collective on the Environment (SLICE), and the Sustainability Committee. We will also explore the possibility of writing grants in coordination with other actors at the College. Most of the course work will happen during class time. Skills in areas of any expertise are welcome, from environmental science to writing to visual and studio arts—but any interest in issues of sustainability and a strong sense of dedication will suffice.

Faculty

• Eric Leveau

First-Year Studies—Year

As our societies address the challenges of climate change, it is important that we explore the implications of the concept of “nature” in the Western and Judeo-Christian tradition. In this course, we will read literary classics—such as Sophocles, Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison, among many others—and examine how they represent the environment, animals and the natural world in ways that directly shape our own perception of nature. We will take different approaches by comparing, for example, stories of world creation from Indigenous nations with narratives taken from the Bible and Greek and Roman texts, or exploring the combination of Celtic magic and Christian symbolism in medieval Arthurian romances, or examining how the aesthetic concept of the sublime is present in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as well as in the written account of the Lewis and Clark expedition up the Missouri River. Going in different directions, we will analyze how feminism developed new ways of relating to nature as counter-narratives to masculine domination, explore the questions of science, machines and technology, or examine how writers and philosophers have integrated animals in their thinking as a way to move beyond the “human-ist” understanding of nature inherited from European Renaissance. In previous iterations of this first-year studies course, students have developed a variety of personal projects: from how flowers are featured in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, or how a community farm in the Bronx challenges outdated urban-planning decisions, to the depiction of nature in Hayao Miyazaki’s films or in Jane Austen’s novels. In fall and spring, students will meet biweekly with the instructor for individual conferences, alongside weekly small group activities.

Faculty

• Eric Leveau

Open, Small Lecture—Fall

Our existence lies in a perpetual state of change. An apple falls from a tree, clouds move across expansive farmland blocking out the sun for days, meanwhile satellites zip around the Earth transmitting and receiving signals to our cell phones. The calculus was invented to develop a language to accurately describe the motion and change happening all around us. The ancient Greeks began a detailed study of change but they were hesitant to wrestle with the infinite and so it was not until the 17th century that Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, among others, tamed the infinite and gave birth to this extremely successful branch of mathematics. Though just a few hundred years old, the calculus has become an indispensable research tool in both the natural and social sciences. Our study will begin with the central concept of the limit and proceed to explore the dual processes of differentiation and integration. Numerous applications of the theory will be examined. Weekly group conferences will be conducted in hands-on workshop mode. This small lecture is intended for students interested in advanced study in mathematics or sciences, students preparing for careers in the health sciences or engineering, and any student wishing to broaden and enrich the life of the mind.

Faculty

• Daniel King

Open, Lecture—Fall

Variance, correlation coefficient, regression analysis, statistical significance, and margin of error. You’ve heard these terms and other statistical phrases bantered about before, and you’ve seen them interspersed in news reports and research articles. But what do they mean? How are they used? And why are they so important? Serving as an introduction to the concepts, techniques, and reasoning central to the understanding of data, this lecture course will focus on the fundamental methods of statistical analysis used to gain insight into diverse areas of human interest. The use, misuse, and abuse of statistics will be the central focus of the course, and specific topics of exploration will be drawn from experimental design theory, sampling theory, data analysis, and statistical inference. Applications will be considered in current events, business, psychology, politics, medicine, and many other areas of the natural and social sciences. Calculator and spreadsheet software will be used extensively in this course, but no prior experience with these technologies is assumed. Group conferences, conducted in workshop mode, will serve to reinforce student understanding of the course material. This lecture is recommended for anybody wishing to be a better-informed consumer of data and strongly recommended for those planning to pursue advanced undergraduate or graduate research in the natural sciences or social sciences.

Faculty

• Daniel King

Intermediate, Seminar—Year

Rarely is a quantity of interest—tomorrow’s temperature, unemployment rates across Europe, the cost of a spring break flight to Fort Lauderdale—a simple function of just one primary variable. Reality, for better or worse, is multivariable. This course will introduce an array of topics and tools used in the mathematical analysis of multivariable functions. The intertwined theories of vectors, matrices, and differential equations and their applications will be the central themes of exploration. Specific topics to be covered will include the algebra and geometry of vectors in two, three, and higher dimensions; dot and cross products and their applications; equations of lines and planes in higher dimensions; solutions to systems of linear equations using Gaussian elimination; theory and applications of determinants, inverses and eigenvectors; volumes of three-dimensional solids via integration; spherical and cylindrical coordinate systems; and methods of visualizing and constructing solutions to differential equations of various types. Conference work will involve an investigation of some mathematically-themed subject of the student’s choosing.

Faculty

• Melvin Irizarry-Gelpi

Open, Small Lecture—Spring

Calculus is the mathematical gift that keeps on giving—thank you, Newton and company! In this course, students will expand their knowledge of limits, derivatives, and integrals with concepts and techniques that will enable them to solve many important problems in mathematics and the sciences. Topics will include differentiation review, integration review, integration with non-polynomial functions, applications of integration (finding area, volume, length, center of mass, moment of inertia, probability), advanced techniques for integration (substitution, integration-by-parts, partial fractions), infinite sequences, infinite series, convergent and divergent sums, power series, differential equations and modeling dynamical systems, and, time permitting, parametric equations of a curve and polar coordinates. Weekly group conferences will be conducted in hands-on workshop mode. This course is intended for students interested in advanced study in mathematics or sciences, students preparing for careers in the health sciences or engineering, and any student wishing to broaden and enrich the life of the mind.

Faculty

• Melvin Irizarry-Gelpi

Intermediate, Seminar—Fall

Explore the beautiful mathematics and physics of waves through both theory and experiment. This course will teach students valuable mathematical methods and basic computational skills that are necessary for more advanced physical-science courses. Laboratory class time will include using advanced lab equipment, analyzing data using Jupyter (IPython) notebooks, learning numerical techniques, and reporting the results using LaTeX. For conference work, students are encouraged to choose an experiment or an American Journal of Physics article to replicate, analyze, and present their findings at the semiannual Sarah Lawrence College Science & Mathematics Poster Session.

Faculty

• Sarah Racz

Advanced, Seminar—Spring

In this research internship course, students will gain research experience through active engagement in a psychology research lab with a member of the psychology faculty. This will involve an internship within a research lab on campus, including a weekly lab meeting, a weekly collaborative meeting across labs, ongoing contributions towards research and practice within their lab and/or community settings, additional individual and group meetings as needed, and additional synchronous and asynchronous research work. Weekly lab meetings will involve reading and discussing research articles and research-methods papers specific to the topics of research being undertaken by each student and faculty member. Students will be expected to learn the current research approaches being employed by their supervising faculty member and to contribute toward ongoing research in the form of a research practicum. They may also have the opportunity to develop and implement their own independent research projects within the labs in which they are working, depending on lab priorities. 

The weekly collaborative cross-labs meeting will include readings on, and discussions of, various concepts in research related to open science practices, finding funding/grant writing, collecting and analyzing data, as well as the discussion of contemporary research articles that are relevant to student and faculty research projects. All faculty and students involved in the research experience will take turns leading the discussion of current research, with faculty taking the lead at the beginning of the semester and students taking the lead as their expertise develops. 

Students participating in the course will be expected to attend and actively participate in weekly collaborative cross-labs meetings and weekly lab meetings; keep an ongoing journal and/or scientific lab notebook; select and facilitate group and lab discussions of relevant contemporary research articles (at least once for each meeting type); work within a lab and/or community setting, as appropriate for their projects; contribute toward ongoing research and practice within their lab or community settings; report on their ongoing lab research in the form of a short paper prepared for possible publication and a poster at the SciMath Poster Symposium; and provide their colleagues with ongoing verbal and written feedback on their projects. Students will be responsible for working collaboratively with their colleagues to further develop their understanding of each of the topics covered in class.

Faculty

• Kim Ferguson
• Sammy Floyd

Open, Studio—Spring

This sculpture course will familiarize students with tools and methods in woodworking, metalwork, and clay. This practical knowledge will be put into a series of assignments considering interspecies design and using skills as a sculptor to make functional form with outdoor sculpture and ecological stewardship in mind. In this course, we will look at artists who work on constructed material form and public sculpture. We will also look at the merging of landscape architecture and gardens toward a holistic approach to building site-specific sculpture and ideate toward a proposal for public works. 

Faculty

• Jessica Segall