Undergraduate Courses

The course will explore urban and regional economic models and policies, including economic forces leading to formation of cities and their evolution. It will focus on conceptual and empirical analysis of policies affecting land use, housing, transportation and other aspects of sub-national economic development and examine American urban policy through an economic lens.

This overview course explores urban and environmental planning issues and problems, and reviews the ways planners grapple with them. Speakers from within and outside of the University describe the content of the issues and state-of-the-art intervention programs and techniques. Topics covered include the origins and history of urban planning, the legal aspects of planning, planning for sustainable development, metropolitan growth and urban sprawl, urban design, housing and real estate development, transportation planning, environmental planning, planning for open space, and historic preservation, brownfield redevelopment, waste management, and third world development.

This undergraduate course is designed to provide students with an overview of the policy and legal implications of land development and use, focusing primarily on the environmental implications of public planning, policy-making, and law at the state and local level. The course is framed around four general topics, each of which will be addressed specifically to environmental issues: the scientific and moral justifications for undertaking private and public land use management; the state and local institutional structures employed for managing land development and use in the U.S., focusing on planning, infrastructure policy, and regulation; the successes and failures of that state and local land management regime and corresponding efforts to reform it; and the ‘wise-use,’ ‘tea party,’ and other popular back-lash responses to land management reforms. Students will learn the substance of the topics described. They will also learn to read and brief legal cases related to land use law, to read and interpret local master plans, and to read and interpret local zoning codes.

Most of the scholarly and popular discussion of sustainable development in the U.S. focuses on cities.  But cities depend economically and ecologically on rural communities–small towns, villages, and counties. These smaller, rural governments manage an enormous part of the physical landscape, including much of the emerging renewable energy landscape. This course focuses on what sustainable development actually looks like in smaller, rural communities.  With the help of insights from sociology and environmental studies, we will explore these questions:

*     How are rural communities different from urban communities–socially, economically, and environmentally? Should we use a different model of development for them?

*     What challenges do these communities face in achieving sustainable development? What resources do they have?  What opportunities can we identify for rural sustainable development?

This course features a substantial civic engagement project. Students will immerse themselves in a small town beyond the borders Ann Arbor, listening to the town’s story in order to learn what sustainability might look like.  Assessment will focus on a term-long group project and individual work throughout the term.

This course provides an overview of the urban housing system to examine how the housing system works and why it has failed to deliver adequate housing for a growing share of the urban population, with a particular focus on the contemporary challenges the housing system faces today. By examining the structure and dynamics of the urban housing system, the course will explore the possible actions that can be taken to address those challenges. While the course will primarily focus on examining market-based housing systems, throughout the course we will also consider how the urban housing system has differed among countries with different political and economic systems.

*Non-Taubman College students should email [email protected] to request permission to enroll*

Explore the dynamic world of transportation policy with a course that lays the foundation for understanding the pivotal role urban transportation plays in city life. This introductory course examines fundamental theories, concepts, and the historical context of transportation policy, offering students a comprehensive overview of the mechanisms that drive transportation systems in the United States. Emphasizing the importance of social equity, environmental sustainability, and technological innovation, students will engage with real-world case studies and policy reform initiatives. Topics include the evolution of transportation infrastructure, multimodal transportation planning, regulatory frameworks, and the impact of transportation on environmental and social justice issues. By the end of the course, students will not only grasp the core elements of transportation policy but also be equipped with analytical tools needed to propose informed and progressive reforms. Help shape the future of transportation through a multidisciplinary lens that prioritizes forward-thinking solutions.

*Non-Taubman College students should email [email protected] to request permission to enroll*

The aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the two-way interactive relationship between health and socio-economic conditions in developing countries. The emphasis in the course is not only on the economics of health and development but on a host of multidisciplinary dimensions related to these two areas. The class will begin with conceptual issues dealing with the nature of health, development and how they interact. It will then turn to an analysis of trends in health and development indicators. The remainder of the class will examine the interaction between health and development through a series of related issues including poverty and income, education, nutrition, environment, gender, fertility, culture and behavior, the impact of globalization in terms of neo-liberal policies, trade and capital flows and the urbanization and the growth of the informal economy and finally the effects of health changes on economic growth and development.

This course offers an introduction to Food Studies, an interdisciplinary field that explores the social, cultural, historical, and political aspects of food and eating. We'll read about and discuss questions like:

• What should we do about the "obesity epidemic"?
• What are the philosophical and practical implications of eating animals?
• Is it really better to eat "local"?
• Where did the association between African Americans and fried chicken come from?

• And many more.

  In addition, we'll watch several recent documentaries and visit the Culinary Archive at the Clements.

  By the end of the class, you will be better equipped to develop research questions, find and evaluate evidence, and articulate nuanced arguments — not only about food but about any subject.

When people say “global health,” they usually mean delivering Western medicine in low-resource settings. This assumes that medicine is a universal good. Is it? Or is biomedicine also a “culture” – with values, practices and understandings built in a particular place and time? What are medicine’s ethics, symbols, economies, experiences of the body, and politics? What happens when these things run up against other ways of viewing the world? In this course, through scholarship and popular media, and through the instructor’s experiences as a practicing physician and anthropologist, we will explore mind-bending paradoxes about what we assume to be true, explore aspects of medical practice, and describe why those practices often have unexpected results when they travel.

This course aims to enhance the student's understanding of how the community environment, built environment, and work environment impact the health and safety of individuals. Psychosocial risk factors not only arise from the nature of work but are also bidirectionally impacted by the environment and existing policies and regulations.

The course provides a comprehensive introduction to the field of reproductive health, in the USA and internationally. The course will introduce students to historical trends in the global burden of reproductive ill-health, the social ecology of reproductive risk, clinical health practice, and current controversies in policy and practice. Through a comparative look at reproductive health needs (e.g. maternal morbidity, contraceptive use, STI care and HIV-related services), in a range of diverse social settings, we will critically examine the logic and impact of current international standards for RH policy and practice.

Reducing racial/ethnic health disparities is core to the mission of public health. This course provides an in-depth examination of racial/ethnic disparities specific to healthcare and healthcare delivery in the United States. This course will critically appraise 1) the causes of these disparities including mistrust, and differential access, communication and treatment, 2) frameworks, theory, and measurement to examine disparities in care and 3) interventions to address healthcare-specific disparities, and change behavior at multiple levels of influence (policy/regulatory, health system/delivery, healthcare provider, and patient/individual). We will examine trends and critical issues in racial/ethnic healthcare disparities before and after the seminal Institute of Medicine Report- Unequal Treatment, and the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

From iPhones to intelligence testing to immunizations, technology, science, and medicine permeate our modern lives. In this course, students will learn to think critically about technology, science, and medicine and analyze how they have transformed the world in spectacular and mundane ways. We explore questions such as: How has the development of the medical profession shaped debates about inoculation or the AIDS epidemic? How have culture and politics affected the goals and designs of such technologies as guns, washing machines, and electrical systems? How have science, technology, and politics interacted in debates over climate change? And, ultimately, how should we manage the tension between popular democracy and technical expertise?

This course is about the health policies and debates of the rich democracies. It should (1) furnish students with the basic language and toolkit of comparative health policy analysis and (2) introduce students to the comparative analysis of issues in health policy and management.

The purposes of this course are to examine the legal context of the relationship between the individual and the community, and to understand public health regulation in the context of a market-driven system. The goals of the course are for students to understand generally: constitutional authority and limits on governmental intervention in public health (i.e., individual rights vs. society's rights); the functions of and interactions between courts, legislatures, and regulators; how law will affect students as strategic thinkers in public health positions; how to recognize legal issues and communicate with attorneys; and the process of public health regulation and potential legal barriers to public health intervention strategies. Specific topics will vary, but will usually include: the nature and scope of public health authority; constitutional constraints on public health initiatives; tobacco control; youth violence; injury prevention; the spread of communicable disease; and regulating environmental risk.

Course examines health care systems in approximately eight developed and developing nations (e.g., United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, United Kingdom, China, Mexico, and Kenya). Comparisons made in: population health, health care financing and control, health professionals and their patients, health care organization, and health system performance and reform strategies.

This course examines how food policies in the U.S. are developed and implemented as well as their impacts on public health, food security and societal well-being. It also examines theories of the policy process and frameworks for undertaking policy analysis.

This course introduces major issues of environmental health science. We will examine what those issues are, what determines them, and how they can be altered. The course provides an overview for students who want an introduction to environmental health as well as students planning to pursue additional environmental health coursework.

This skills-based course is focused on providing students with the background, knowledge, skills, and experience needed to create a range of LGBTQ+ health promotion products/materials, programs/interventions, and policies/structural change strategies for diverse populations in multiple settings - including strategies used in local U.S. settings and in global settings. Students will explore and understand health concerns experienced by LGBTQ+ people and communities, and examine the range of LGBTQ+ specific social determinants of health and health inequities. LGBTQ+ health promotion strategies that are delivered at multiple socioecological levels (i.e., individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and structural/policy) will be reviewed and analyzed in order to explore benefits and challenges of each. Students will then critically analyze existing LGBTQ+ health promotion materials and products (both local and global); interventions and programs; and health policies and other structural change strategies. They will also produce their own LGBTQ+ health promotion product or material; concept sheet for the development of a new LGBTQ+ health promotion intervention or program; and LGBTQ+ specific health policy brief or fact sheet. Finally, students will work with a global LGBTQ+ focused community-based organization (CBO) to develop and produce an LGBTQ+ health promotion product, program concept, or policy brief to be used by the CBO.

Students will: grapple with the complex etiology and consequences of food insecurity in the U.S., including the historical roots of current programming; interrogate current approaches to addressing it at the local, state, and federal levels; and synthesize the state of the science toward policy proposals for strategic programmatic refinements.

This course provides an overview of the current U.S. Health Care System with the emphasis on the components and challenges of the Organization, Delivery, and Financing of health care today.

This course will provide an overview of the essential role of the public health system, which includes health care systems, government organizations and non-governmental organizations, in improving health locally and globally. The top achievements in public health will be critically examined along with current and emerging challenges and threats to human health and well-being, including health inequities. Mechanisms and measures for evaluating human health and illness will be discussed. This course will emphasize multidisciplinary and multi-sector approaches to health promotion and disease prevention.

This course introduces the importance of data in public health, including collection, analysis, interpretations, and dissemination. It provides examples of data used to evaluate public health decisions, policy and resource allocation. It is an introduction to biostatistical and epidemiological methods, informatics, and big data including usage, management and challenges.

This course introduces students to strategies as well as best practices and challenges in translating strategies into public health policies, programs and practices. This course provides an overview of stakeholders who create, enact, and assess health promotion strategies. Students will identify, define and evaluate strategies to address public health issues.

This class will provide students with skills to advocate for public health policies at all levels of government. Through lectures, class discussions, and group projects on "live" public health issues, students develop the skills to create opportunities to inform policymaking, and become more effective communicating in the policymaking environment.

This course introduces essential vaccinology, covering pre-clinical vaccine development, clinical trials, new vaccine licensing, immunization program design and evaluation. It also introduces population transmission dynamics concepts, and the impact of pathogen and human population diversity on vaccination. Recent advancements in major types of non-infectious vaccines will also be discussed.

Provides an asynchronous, engaging, and interactive way to understand the U.S. healthcare system, with a focus on health policy. This online course requires viewing of videos and asynchronous interprofessional discussion board activities, with optional attendance at synchronous discussions each week.

This course will explore social aspects of health, illness, and the health care system in the United States. We will begin with a general overview of what a sociological perspective of medicine actually means. We will then focus on various forms of inequality, particularly with respect to race, gender and class, before moving on to study the medical profession. We will also touch on controversial topics such as medical experimentation, the role of the patient, and ethical medical decision-making. This class will give you a new perspective on medicine to see it not only as a practice for making sick bodies well, but also for maintaining social control, establishing ideas of human worth, and even a new kind of citizenship.

This course surveys legal and ethical issues surrounding decisions about pregnancy and childbirth, with a focus on reproductive injustice. We will look at current issues in the news, U.S. cases, and statutory laws on the rights of people related to both achieving and preventing reproduction. This includes childbearing issues, maternal-fetal questions, pregnancy prevention, and terminations, as well as laws and practices restricting access to services. We will consider issues of prenatal personhood, medical research, individual rights versus societal standards, autonomy versus medical standards, and sexual rights. We will pay special attention to how the law defines "rights" and the difference between "reproductive rights" and "reproductive justice." Students will learn to read and analyze legal decisions to better understand how the legal system works to resolve conflicts and navigate social policy issues.

The topic of corporate sustainability remains controversial. Some argue that sustainability is a property of whole systems, such as an ecosystem or the Earth as a whole, not of individual organizations. What, if anything, does it mean to say that a company is sustainable? Academic research on the topic of corporations and sustainability has seen rapid growth since the first Rio Earth Summit. This course will explore that body of knowledge, placing it within the larger context of environmental economics, and the economics of sustainability more broadly. The goals of the course are three-fold: (1) To give students a solid foundation in the economics of the environment and sustainability; (2) to apply economic fundamentals to crucial sustainability issues of climate change and energy policy; and (3) to examine critically the business case for sustainability, and the place of sustainability within corporate strategy.

Introduction to techniques of risk-benefit analysis as applied to water resources and environmental engineering. Techniques of multi-objective water resource planning. The engineering political interfaces; consideration of political bargaining and decision-making.

This course uses models from industrial organization to study competition policy and regulation of an industry. The course will apply these approaches to study regulation and antitrust issues in a variety of industries including healthcare, energy, transportation, and technology. We also study actual legal cases. The goals of the course include understanding the reasons for antitrust laws and regulation and being able to discuss and analyze the benefits and costs of government intervention in markets.

Energy is an incredibly complex topic by virtue of the inter-linkages of science, technology, public policy, economics, and human behaviors. This course will examine all aspects of energy: supply and demand, technical and social, with a concerted look at the natural place of social science (behavior, pricing, externalities, social norms) in the energy sphere.

Every aspect of present-day society depends on the continuing availability of clean, affordable, flexible, secure, and safe energy resources. Yet nearly 90% of our current energy needs are met by fossil fuels. Our reliance on fossil fuels has led to declining supplies, rising prices, global climate change, and security concerns. The current global energy economy is not sustainable. The technological challenges are formidable; but they cannot be considered solutions without considering the human and social behavioral side of energy demand.

The quest for solutions to "The Energy Problem" is dominated by technology "fixes". The visions of practical technological fixes, whether electricity energy generation, oil exploration and extraction, pollution mitigation, automobile fuel efficiency and alternatives to combustion engines, etc., necessarily build on what we know today and presume that we can achieve in a couple of decades or so, through sufficient R&D, an energy supply-demand balance that fulfills a wide range of incompatible requirements — cheap, environmentally benign, politically secure, unconstrained supply, convenient, and safe. While we expect technology to come to our energy-rescue and support our established patterns of economic growth and energy-intensive lifestyles, we tend to expect very little from the human and social behavioral side of energy use and demand. In some ways the Energy Problem is yet another version of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures — parallel technology and social cultures with little mutual understanding and rare cross-over exchange.

The Complex Systems view would hold that society and Energy technologies have coevolved through the actions of individual agents (inventors, scientists, entrepreneurs, financiers, writers, politicians, kings and queens, dictators, and statesman), learning, adapting, selecting, exchanging information, and interacting through transactions of many kinds. At every stage, the social, economic, and technological systems were tightly coupled. It is not possible to understand Energy Problems without framing them in a systems context.

This course focuses on the contribution economics has made in understanding and managing environmental and natural resource problems. The course will analyze the sources of environmental and natural resource problems using economic tools. Given this knowledge students will learn how these economic tools, through market based incentives, may resolve these problems. Finally, We'll take a look at real policies and discuss the problems of transitioning policies from theory into the practical realm.

Business can, and indeed must, play a greater role in responding to society's grand challenges. The deep poverty faced by the Base of the Pyramid (BoP) - the 4-5 billion poorest people on this planet and constituting approximately two-thirds of humanity - presents a challenge on the grandest scale. While donation-based approaches have their place, the promise of achieving both profits and social impact through market-based approaches offers an exciting alternative. Business opportunities in health care, energy, agriculture, sanitation, housing, education, consumer goods, clean water and other impact areas can lead to a more inclusive capitalism. The challenge is to build enterprises that are sustainable at scale in an impoverished and unfamiliar market context. The course integrates concepts of strategy, international business, entrepreneurship, non-profit management, and development to stimulate the leadership skills and competitive imagination needed to design, pilot, and scale BoP enterprises. Emphasizing action-based learning and using carefully selected cases, readings, videos, and outside guests, class sessions focus on: 1)identifying the opportunities and challenges associated with serving BoP markets; and 2) developing a toolkit of strategies, frameworks, and processes for building sustainable, scalable enterprises that create economic and social value.

This course introduces students to global environmental politics, justice and development. This course will explore environmental issues around the world and the relatedness of nature to politics, development and culture. We will address historically unique social form that presents special challenges to our understanding of environmental politics, gender, race and culture by looking at case studies from around the world. Among the questions that we will examine are the following: How have local and global histories, memories, practices, values, gender, race and identities that derive from our understanding of politics intersect with nature? Are there environmental issues that are also issues of race, class and gender? For example, are there particular forms of knowledge and subjectivity that intersect or interact with race and gender difference, or ideas about civilization and primitivity that could be seen as distinctive instruments of environmental rule?

Sustainable engineering principles include calculations of environmental emissions and resource consumption. Mass and energy balance calculations in context of pollution generation and prevention, resource recovery and life-cycle assessment. Economic aspects of sustainable engineering decision-making. Social impacts of technology system design decisions including ethical frameworks, government legislation and health risks.

A review of strategies for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in power generation, transportation, and the built environment. Sources, discharges, and physical properties of greenhouse gases are surveyed; technologies for greenhouse gas emission avoidance or sequestration are discussed. Policy options for greenhouse gas control and carbon footprint reduction are considered.

This course is intended to provide students with an understanding of the critical issues in energy technologies. Researchers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs and policymakers discuss technology, policy and economic drivers for sustainable global energy systems. Students complete homework assignments and a term paper on an energy-themed subject.

This course deals with mineral resource-related problems in a complex society. The course discusses the origin, distribution, and remaining supplies of mineral resources in terms of the economic, engineering, political, and environmental factors that govern their recovery, processing, and use.

The course begins with a presentation of the basic ideas of the method of science and its history and then proceeds to an analysis of the current environmental crises, especially as related to the problem of food and energy and their production and utilization. Subjects include the crisis of obesity in the U.S., nutritional diseases such as diabetes, the growth of the industrial system of agriculture, alternative forms of agriculture, the development of the hydrocarbon energy society, global climate change and its consequences, among others. Emphasis is placed on the need for scientific understanding of these problems and citizen participation in developing rational solutions.

In this course, students will gain a background in the physical and cultural geography of the Great Lake basin and explore water issues in the watershed pertaining to topics such as pollution, climate change, ecosystem services, human water usage, and local and basin-level water resource policies. Emphasis will be placed on systems-based thinking as it pertains to the characteristics and functioning of water features (e.g., lakes, streams, wetlands, aquifers) within the basin.

Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to matters concerning the allocation of natural resources and the quality of our environment. Through lectures and discussions, students are encouraged not only to learn about environmental issues but also to consider their personal ethics relating to nature, resource use, and human populations.

Water plays an essential role in sustaining human and ecosystem health; it also has tremendous recreational, agricultural, commercial, and industrial value. How do we as a society balance these competing needs? The purpose of this course is to explore topics related to freshwater use, access, and availability within North America.

This course explores the relationship between environment and social inequality. It examines how race, class, and gender interact in American rural and urban environments to produce or sustain inequalities. The course examines how structural factors and community characteristics influence environmental outcomes. Students will begin by examining historical environmental justice issues in American cities. The course also examines the issue of food security; it looks at the rise in community gardening in poor communities as an attempt to combat the lack of access to healthy food. Students will also examine the root causes of residential segregation and the spatial inequalities that arise from the siting of hazardous facilities in minority and low-income urban and rural communities. A portion of the course analyses international environmental justices related to climate change and disasters as well as farming and pesticide use.

What role should government play in managing the Earth’s natural resources and ecosystems?

In this course, we will use economics as a lens through which to analyze the interaction between humans and the environment. We will learn the economics rationale for government regulation of environmental quality; we will identify the behavioral and institutional challenges to effective regulation; and we will explore the many policy tools at our disposal. You will become adept at applying economic intuition to all types of questions about the environment and, in the process, hone your analytical, writing, and communication skills.

In the first half of the course, we will master the economic theory and concepts that are common to many environmental policy contexts. In the second half, we will then apply what we have learned to today’s most important environmental topics. The emphasis will be on climate change, which many people see as the preeminent environmental issue of our time. We will learn how climate change challenges conventional economic analysis, and we will learn how governments have attacked this challenge so far. The causes and effects of climate change reach far and wide, and so in this part of the course, we will also study electricity markets, transportation, water pollution, and conservation, among other relevant topics. We will take as case studies several different countries with unique environmental and economic profiles, and we will additionally see how domestic markets and policies truly have global consequences.

This course is an advanced offering on environmental politics and the environmental policy-making process. The course considers both processes of policy formation and implementation, placing particular emphasis on the development of alternatives to conventional regulatory practices at federal, state, and local levels of government.

Environmental Law introduces you to the history and current structure of American environmental law. It addresses the constitutional foundations of environmental law, some major federal environmental regulatory statutes, and current debates over governmental management of the environment. Topics include: federal authority over public land and water, tribal authority over natural resources, how to ensure environmental justice, and whether and how federal or state government can address climate change. There will be no exams; grades will be based on written work and a group presentation. This course meets in person.

This course focuses on addressing the challenges of the global climate crisis in ways that acknowledge the uneven impacts of climate change on different communities around the world. This course examines several topics including the tradition of Indigenous resistance to climate colonialism, non-violent civil disobedience in climate social movements, direct action strategies towards fossil fuel companies, policy proposals based on the Green New Deal, ecological debt and climate reparations, and climate legal activism. These topics are framed by the concept of global climate justice, which addresses two primary questions: how does climate change unevenly impact different communities in the global north and global south, and what are the meaningful collective actions that can be taken to address these global disparities in a socially just way? This course will challenge students to think deeply about the global impact of climate change on different communities as well as various social strategies for mitigating these impacts.

“Racial capitalism” refers to the fact that to generate profits, capitalism exploits – and in turn produces – differences among peoples. Not just differences in “race” but also gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, and physical abilities, among many other distinctions that can be used to create hierarchies of human worth and disposability.

In this seminar, we will study the roles that science plays in racial capitalism. We will explore how scientific work facilitates the differentiation of people into groups in order to control human reproduction and social life – as part of the quest for wealth accumulation.

We will draw examples from several scientific fields, such as biology and psychology, but pay special attention to the roles that statistics and computation play in manufacturing and exploiting difference. Throughout the course, we will look for moments of rebellion against racial capitalism and mainstream scientific practice, and the possibility of alternatives.

We will discuss topics such as eugenics, intelligence testing, racialized medicine, and reproductive technologies. And we will strive to situate scientific theories and practices within the broad agendas of institutions such as the state, the academy, the prison, and the hospital. 

Workers (and people generally) are not treated equally under capitalism. Capitalism feeds on racial hierarchies. Racial capitalism refers to this fact about how capitalism works. Capitalism exploits differences among peoples – along the lines of race, gender, sexuality, religion, reproductive or physical abilities – to suppress solidarity and create hierarchies of human worth. It produces highly unequal and racist societies.

In this seminar, we will critically examine the roles that science and technology play in sustaining racial capitalism. We will explore how scientific work enables the differentiation of people into groups for the purposes of profit and accumulation of land. Our perspective will be anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-zionist.

We will draw examples from several scientific fields, including biology and psychology, but pay special attention to the roles that statistics and computation play in creating hierarchies of worth. We will examine how scientific theories and practices fit into the agendas of the state and institutions such as universities, prisons, and hospitals.

Throughout the course, we will also look for alternatives to the racial capitalist way of doing things and to dominant scientific practices.

This course provides an introduction to public policy design and analysis using "systematic thinking" from the social sciences and humanities, with the application of scientific methods and knowledge more generally. Systematic thinking about how social problems are defined/understood and how policy both creates and can address societal problems is essential to the design and evaluation of public policies. This 4-credit course consists of three hours of lecture and one section meeting each week. The course will cover policy definitions/frameworks, the policymaking process, and how to evaluate and justify public policy through the lenses of science, ethics and social equity. In addition, the course will include a number of short modules, this year focusing on key policy issues that are being discussed in the context of an election year, such as public policies regarding the environment/climate change, public health and health care, education, social welfare, immigration, international trade, and science/technology. A number of guest faculty experts will assist with the short modules. There are no pre-reqs for this course. PubPol 201 provides an introduction to the field of public policy. Course requirements include two exams, 3 short papers and active class participation (including debates). Students who like 201 might want to look into the Ford School's major and minor in public policy.

This course introduces students to social, ethical, and equity dimensions of emerging technologies, the technology policy landscape, and tools to analyze both. The course does not require scientific or technical knowledge and helps students of all backgrounds understand technology policy issues. Students will gain skills to:

• Develop foundational understanding of technology policymaking.
• Systematically analyze technology policy issues using interdisciplinary approaches from the social sciences and humanities.
• Identify potential social and environmental issues in the context of technoscientific development and learn how public policy can both create and address these issues.
• Advocate for social equity and justice through technology policy.
• Meaningfully engage in debates concerning the impact of emerging technologies on economic development, future of work, democracy, and racial justice.

We are thought by some to be living in a golden age of innovation, with technological changes occurring at an increasing rate. And technological innovation is a primary goal of many businesses that seek to remain competitive and of many government policies that hope to aid local industries in being innovative. But there is a great deal of variation in which kinds of firms and which kinds of regions are highly innovative: many enterprises and regions lag behind, despite the emphasis on creating and diffusing new technologies. This variation raises the central question of what conditions actually engender or inhibit innovation. Focusing on technological innovation in the business world, this course examines what firm-level characteristics make some better able to develop technologies than others, and what social and political characteristics help make some regions more innovative than others.

This course will be roughly organized into three different sections. As a starting place, (i) we will discuss some of the general characteristics of technological innovation as a social process; from there, (ii) we will examine some of the major characteristics of firms (and other organizations) that encourage or inhibit technological innovation or behaviors that are associated with innovative behavior; and, finally, (iii) we will make a brief study of the kinds of broader social, political, and economic conditions that are likely to facilitate technological innovation among local firms. The intention of the course is to provide a theoretical basis for understanding innovation, anchored by both historical and current empirical examples, applied case studies that require the application of existing theory, and guest speakers whose jobs involve technological innovation. There are, in fact, a number of uncertainties and ongoing debates regarding both how to structure firms for innovation and what can be done to promote the environmental conditions that favor firms. That is to say, while you will draw applicable lessons from the course, it is intended to provide you a broad understanding of issues related to innovation rather than to more narrowly train you how to “do” innovation.

On May 24, 1844, Samuel B. Morse inaugurated the world’s first long distance telegraph line with a portentous question: “What hath God wrought?” This seminar looks to technological change in the past to equip students with concepts and knowledge to grapple with technological change today.

This course has two main goals: (1) to introduce students to science and technology studies from a sociological lens; and (2) to equip students with historical knowledge that they can use to deepen their own understanding of the complex dynamics of technology, power, and social change, past and present. To these ends, this course is structured in three parts. In the first, students will be introduced to foundational concepts in science and technology studies. In the second, students will apply these concepts to consider various transformations in nineteenth century America. Instead of focusing on the traditional protagonists of technologically-driven accounts of social change such as railroads and factories, students will be challenged to expand how they conceptualize technology by considering new formations of property, finance, and race as technologies in their own right. In the final part of this course, students will be introduced to frameworks through which scholars are making sense of the intersection of
technology and social change today. In exploring these dynamics, this course prepares students to ask better questions about the complex relationship between technological change, social change, and human good.

This class explores how the public consumes scientific information and how scientific findings translate into policy. In a simulation environment, students evaluate and implement strategies for translating contemporary science into outreach and public policy campaigns. Divided into committees focused on understanding the science, assessing human behavior, generating outreach messaging, and seeking policy change, students come to understand how science is warped as it makes its way from researchers to policymakers and public opinion. This term, we will be examining the science and practice of sustainability.

This new class is designed to help you think critically and historically about AI. Rather than seeing AI as either something that will bring about the end of the world or as something that is a short-term fad, we’ll use cultural studies and media studies to understand where AI / machine learning came from, the myths that typically surround it, and where it’s heading. We’ll take a particular interest in the social and political impacts of AI, thinking about how it’s changing the future of work; its impact on the environment; its disproportionate impact on marginalized populations; how race and gender are built into AI models; and what we might do about these problems.

Finally, we’ll focus on AI art and literature. With some hands-on experimentation, we’ll use (and possibly even develop our own) generative AI tools to investigate text and image.

An analysis of the processes by which security policy is formulated and of the major issues of contemporary security policy including global and regional strategic concepts, arms control, and disarmament.

This course will introduce interdisciplinary ethics theories and frameworks and apply them to current issues in artificial intelligence, social media, cryptocurrency, and more. Students will learn to think critically about how to ethically plan, design, and evaluate new technologies when there are often no simple solutions.

Applies an emergent philosophy of information to a variety of new technologies that are inherently social in their design, construction, and use. Learning modules include: social media interaction; remembering/forgetting; and game design ethics. By collaborating on building a wiki community, students explore ethical/unethical information behaviors and test information quality metrics.

 Algorithms are a set of rules for computers to follow. Algorithms affect myriad aspects of everyday life, from facial recognition to privacy to policing to social media. This course will examine the ways that algorithms impact individuals and communities, especially in ways that may not be obvious to people who are consumers of algorithmic technologies. We will investigate concepts of bias, discrimination, fairness, ethics, and justice, especially as they relate to attributes like gender, race, or health. Students will be tested via quizzes and will be given an opportunity to explore new ideas.