Students Explore Urban Living, Barbie, and More During Immersion Summer 2024
Knox students participated in multiple intensive four-week immersive programs during summer 2024.
Environmental Studies
Turn your curiosity about the natural world into knowledge—and drive real change.
Major or Minor in Environmental Studies
Course Spotlight
Environmental studies courses at Knox are tiered, meaning you won’t need to follow a single track of coursework. You’ll start with foundational courses like Earth Science, Environmental Methods, and Introductory Social Science and then have the freedom to decide the best way for you to personally explore and complete the major.
- ENVS 180 Sustainability: Explorations and Opportunities
- ENVS 225 Critical Approaches to Environmental Justice
- ENVS 320 Ethnobotany
- ENVS 360 Politics of Climate Change
Expect to get your boots dirty.
Hands-on learning at Knox gets you outside… out of the classroom and into the field, from local field trips to immersive work at Green Oaks. You might conduct research, spend time working at the Knox Farm, or take your learning abroad. With opportunities like Green Oaks Term and independent research experiences, you’ll apply what you’re learning in real ecosystems, real communities, and real time.
Field, Forest, and Lab
The Environmental Studies program is housed in Umbeck Science-Mathematics Center (SMC), where there are several large teaching laboratories as well as dedicated student/faculty research laboratories. Other resources include:
- An outdoor urban farm.
- Controlled environmental chambers and the Ellen Browning Scripps Greenhouse.
- Green Oaks, a 700-acre preserve and biological field station that includes prairie, woodland and wetland habitats.
- The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) laboratory, which provides access to computers with the latest ESRI ArcGIS Pro software.
- Hand-held and differential Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, as well as equipment for water quality monitoring, soil sampling, and other environmental field work.
- Portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer (XRF) for geochemical analysis, a drone for photogrammetry, and a Total Station for advanced mapping.
- The geology laboratory provides space for student projects including basic wet lab functionality, specialized equipment for sample preparation and analysis, a rock saw and ball mill, petrographic and stereo microscopes, and sediment sieves.
Departments across SMC share larger equipment, like the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) in Biology and the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectrometer (NMR) in Chemistry.
Environmental Studies News
Seeing Double
On June 8, Commencement at Knox College was a special occasion as four sets of twins took the stage, delighting the audience with twice the pride.
Tove Himango ’24 Named Nick Adams Finalist
Himango has taken a wide array of writing courses, including playwriting, fiction, and nonfiction.
Environmental Studies FAQs
An Environmental Studies degree prepares students for a wide range of careers across the private sector, non-profit organizations, government agencies, research institutions, and graduate programs. Because the field of Environmental Studies is interdisciplinary, graduates build skills in science, policy, communication, data analysis, and project management—allowing them to pursue many different paths.
Knox provides a broad set of options to focus on based on student interest, including strong relationships between Environmental Studies, Biology and Political Science. Students can easily find mentorship and research opportunities that cross disciplinary boundaries, and they have choice within the major track to focus on areas that are of most interest to them.
The capstone sequence for Knox Environmental Studies majors includes a prep course that asks them to develop their own research question and methodology to answer it. Students then complete a second half- or full-credit independent credit under a mentor, when they carry out their plan, collect and analyze data and write their paper.
All majors have to complete a capstone research project, but they can choose their own direction and focus. Students are encouraged to pursue something they are interested in. Departmental resources are available to support student projects and many apply for a Richter Award if they want to travel to attend academic conferences as well.
There are summer opportunities to conduct independent or collaborative research at Green Oaks or on campus. December-term projects are also available. Students can also take independent study credit during the term if they are interested in working on a specific project with a faculty mentor.
Is Knox for you?
Contact us to find out more about our comprehensive majors, minors, and programs.
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