Core Course
Core Course: Environment & Society
Each of our ten Colleges has a core course with a slightly different theme. Unlike any other course you will take in your college career, this is a class that every single first year student will take at UCSC. This course is designed to help you develop and solidify your reading, writing, and analytical skills that will carry you through your college career, no matter what degree or major you end up seeking here at UCSC. At Rachel Carson College the theme in our core course is Environment and Society. Throughout the quarter, you will study various ecological and environmental topics, both local and global, all the while asking questions such as: What is nature? What are the causes and consequences of environmental and social injustice? What is justice in a time of global climate change?
The Rachel Carson College Core Course (CRSN 1), Academic Literacy and Ethos, is the required first-year college core course, the first part of the Academic Literacy Curriculum, which introduces students to critical and analytical reading at the university level (most students will go on to take one or more additional classes through the Writing Program). The Rachel Carson College Core Course offers students a foundation for intellectual exploration and personal development as members of an academic community. It teaches reading and thinking processes essential to success at the university, and “habits of mind” that demystify academic work and promote independent, self-reflective, and collaborative participation in campus culture.
The Rachel Carson College Core Course focuses on the theme “Environment and Society,” through an interdisciplinary examination of environmental history, philosophy, science, justice, and literature. The course considers the ecological and environmental histories of California and beyond—the shape and biology of the land as well as the role of people in shaping the state’s many landscapes; what novels, stories and articles can tell us about the relationship between our environments and ourselves. In pursuing these topics, students also delve into some of the environmental and ecological science that underpins them. The course consists of a weekly plenary (large lecture) and a bi- or tri-weekly seminar (discussion section).