Course Listings

The course guides students through the process of developing an individualized research project in close partnership with their faculty advisor. We focus on writing a research proposal, which prepares students to apply for competitive research funding and is required of all MESc/MFS students. In doing so, we cover critical reading of the literature, narrowing a broad topic of interest to a feasible research project, proposal writing, and a high-level introduction to the philosophy of science. Students engage in peer review throughout the course and present their completed proposals to the class at the end of the semester.

One of the most important aspects of scientific research involves the communication of research findings to the wider scientific community. Therefore, second-year M.E.Sc. and M.F.S. students are required to present the results of their faculty-supervised research as participants in the Master’s Student Research Conference, a daylong event held near the end of the spring term. Student contributors participate by delivering a fifteen-minute oral presentation to the YSE faculty and student body or by presenting a research poster in a session open to the YSE community. Students receive a score of satisfactory completion for this effort.

This course empowers you to collaboratively explore the environmental systems you care most about, challenge prior assumptions, and engage with diverse perspectives.

Building on the tools and frameworks introduced in Fall 1 (Mods and ENV553), ENV554 provides space to apply and experiment with leadership and systems-thinking approaches through in-class exercises, peer discussion, and small group work organized around shared interests.

The course also features practitioner-expert guest speakers with diverse experiences across sectors, geographies, and change strategies — from joining existing organizations, to growing start-ups, to building coalitions for systemic impact.

Combined with ENV553, this course is designed to strengthen your leadership toolkit, deepen your systems-thinking skills, and help you design a purposeful, impactful path through Yale and beyond. As with ENV553, both leadership and systems-thinking work are grounded in an appreciation of your unique perspective and the valuable perspectives of others.

This workshop in audiovisual scholarship explores ways to present research through the moving image. Students work within a Public Humanities framework to make a documentary that draws on their disciplinary fields of study. Designed to fulfill requirements for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities.

The world’s freshwater systems are under mounting stress. Inefficient water use in agriculture, industry, and energy production has depleted rivers, reservoirs, and aquifers, intensifying water scarcity and imperiling food and energy security. Climate change compounds these pressures, especially in arid and semi-arid regions where declining precipitation and rising temperatures are amplifying inequities in access to safe drinking water. The quality of freshwater is also at risk.  Land-use conversion, manufacturing, mining, and urban runoff are driving salinization of riverine ecosystems and introducing legacy and emerging contaminants into groundwater on which millions depend for their daily needs.  This seminar examines the natural and human drivers of  freshwater depletion, flow alteration, and degradation, while also exploring established and innovative approaches to mitigate these challenges.  
 

This is a practical writing course meant to develop your skills as a writer. But its real subject is perception and the writer’s authority—the relationship between what you notice in the world around you and what, culturally speaking, you’re allowed to notice. What you write during the semester is driven entirely by your own interest and attention. How you write is the question at hand. We’ll be exploring the overlapping habitats of language—present and past—and the natural environment. And, to a lesser extent, we’ll be exploring the character of  persuasion in environmental themes. Every member of the class will write every week, and we will all read what everyone writes every week. It makes no difference whether you’re a would-be journalist, scientist, environmental advocate or policy-maker. The goal is to rework your writing and sharpen your perceptions, both sensory and intellectual. Application for interested students will be avaiable in August.

This intensive fall seminar is designed for students from diverse disciplines with experience in summer fieldwork data collection to analyze and produce various outputs that facilitate a deeper understanding of climate migration. The course explores the complex relationship between climate change and migration, focusing on hands-on quantitative and qualitative data manipulation and analysis of the attribution of environmental/climate change drivers, the experiences of migrants, the responses of host communities, and the rise of a conservative, negative narrative on climate migration. Legal frameworks and human rights perspectives are central to understanding the challenges and opportunities for climate migrants. At the end of the course, we expect students to gain a deeper understanding of the diverse challenges and opportunities within attribution science, as well as the human rights, policy, political, and financial frameworks at the intersection of climate change and migration, through data preprocessing, the use of different tools, analysis, documenting and writing. The course enables students to develop the skills and perspectives needed to pursue inclusive, interactive, solution-oriented approaches to climate migration challenges.

This seminar is based on outside speakers and internal student/faculty presentations oriented toward original research in the field of environmental and natural resource economics and policy. Presentations are aimed at the doctoral level, but interested master’s students may enroll with permission of the instructors.

This course provides the foundation for doctoral study at the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. As a major part of the course, students will learn what it means to do scholarly research as well as become adept with philosophy of science and research methodology and proposal writing, as a basis for exploring diverse approaches to formulating and addressing research questions. Students will work with their advisers to put these concepts and principles into practice to develop the basis for their dissertation research (including building bibliography, identifying and crafting research questions, formulating research hypotheses and drafting a research proposal).  Students will further learn about funding opportunities and procedures for submitting grants. The course will also cover professional ethics and responsible conduct of research, including ethical approaches to inquiry and measurement, data acquisition and management, authorship and publication, peer review, conflicts of interest, mentoring, collaborative research, and animal and human subjects research.  Finally, the course will explore ethical ways to advocate for the application of scholarly knowledge in the interest of environmental problem solving.  Weekly assigned readings will support concepts and issues addressed in class. Students will present their embryonic research ideas in class and use feedback from the group to further develop their ideas

1 course credit/credit/fail. A biweekly seminar for Dove doctoral advisees and students in the combined YSE/Anthropology doctoral program. Presentation and discussion of grant proposals, dissertation prospectuses, and dissertation chapters; trial runs of conference presentations and job talks; discussion of comprehensive exams, grantsmanship, fieldwork, data analysis, writing and publishing, and the job search; and collaborative writing and publishing projects.

Credits: 1-4
Fall 2025: Tu, 12:10-2:00, location TBA
Spring 2026: Tu, 12:10-2:00, location TBA

Follows Law School Calendar
Open only to students who have successfully completed the Environmental Protection Clinic (ENV 970). Attendance at the clinic seminar is optional, except for specific dates during the semester to be indicated on the syllabus.
For all questions, please contact EPC Clinical Fellow Kevin Chen (kevin.x.chen@yale.edu) or Teaching Fellow Stephanie Prufer (stephanie.prufer@yale.edu).

Course Bidding: To apply, please complete the clinic’s Bidding Form by July 10, 4:30 p.m. ET. On the bidding form, we ask you to rank the projects you are interested in working on. More information on the application process is included in the bidding form.
Limited to 15
Faculty

• Daina Bray
• David Hawkins
• Sara Imperiale
• Jane Jacoby
• Douglas Kysar*
• Jonathan Lovvorn
• Jennifer Skene
• Lisa Suatoni

* Primary Instructor