A US university is taking a step to equip its graduates for the real world, by mandating they take a course that covers climate change. More than 40 classes at the University of California, San Diego will fulfill the requirement, ABC News reports, including courses on planetary health, the intersection of gender and climate justice, energy economics, the ethics of climate change, and how the environment has shaped literature. "The most important thing is that UC San Diego wants to make sure we're preparing students for the future that they really will encounter," said Sarah Gille, a physical oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who helped create the plan.
The rule, the first at a major American university, will affect about 7,000 students from the class of 2028 this year, per the Guardian. To count, at least 30% of a course's content must be related to climate, and the class must address two of these areas: scientific foundations, human impacts, mitigation strategies, and project-based learning. The courses include the Astronomy of Climate Change, Gender and Climate Justice, Indigenous Approaches to Climate Change, and Environmentalism in Arts and Media. The plan is designed to not delay a student's graduation.
Dan Rudnick, chair of the committee that approves courses, said, "It was really important to me that students would have as many course options as possible so this would not be a burden and they would ultimately graduate with a deeper understanding of climate change." Gille said the move will help prepare students for developing opportunities in climate-adjacent fields, including carbon accounting and civil engineering with a climate focus. (More climate change stories.)
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