Energy and Society Program

Allegheny College provides an excellent suite of programs and courses for students interested in sustainability and community development. The Environmental Science, Political Science, and Economics Departments all have offerings that engage students in these topics. A student can major or minor in any of these departments with an emphasis in, for instance, environmental politics, or can major in Environmental Studies. But there is no program that takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to teaching topics like sustainable development and "green living."

An Energy and Society program would fill this gap by providing students with an interdisciplinary curriculum, likely enough for a minor, that covers topics in sustainable development with a focus on energy consumption and its effects on history and modern society. As such Professor Maniates and myself are developing the resources necessary to create several courses to fit within this program. We hope to have several courses in place next year to supplement the few that already exist, and also develop several modules within existing courses so that they too could count for the program.

This suite of resources will serve to create courses in Political Science, Economics, and History first. These departments are an excellent starting point for extending into the divisions of humanities and natural sciences. The courses we are currently pursuing in Political Science are courses focusing on Chinese energy policy and the sociopolitical effects of the energy trade on the Middle East. In History we are considering several options, including one on the rise of the automobile in American life. Finally we have no clear indication of how to proceed in Economics, but would likely hope to integrate an energy component into existing Environmental Economics curriculum, though the practicality of that is unclear.

Over the rest of the summer we will lay more clear plans, which I'll continue to post on this blog. Hopefully within the next few weeks we will have a more exacting list of those courses that will be developed for the rest of the summer, as well as have a stronger vision for an Energy and Society curriculum in the humanities and natural sciences.