Roosevelt University: Chicago, IL

Additional registration info available here

U students paddle the North Branch of the Chicago River, Fall 2012 (M. Bryson)

SUST seniors Brittany Janney and Michelle Giles conduct field experiments on water infiltration rates in Chicago parklands (summer 2018)

SUST students working at the Eden Place Nature Center on Chicago’s South Side, 2 Dec 2014 (M. Bryson)

SUST 361: Urban Ecology 
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Summer 2020 - This course will be offered entirely online and taught by Prof. Graham Pickren at the Chicago Campus.

A unique experiential learning course, SUST 361 introduces students to the research methods and practices of the growing field of Urban Ecology. In the environmental sciences, cities were once considered unsuitable for studies of “nature.” However, urban landscapes are now being recognized not only as important places for wildlife habitat, but also as laboratories where new relationships between people and ecosystems are emerging. This course provides students with an overview of urban ecology followed by instruction in research methodologies like air quality monitoring, urban heat island monitoring, and stormwater management. While normally offered as an in-person experiential learning course, due to COVID-19 this course will be offered fully online in 2020. Students will still be able to independently collect and analyze data relevant to human and ecological well-being in Chicago and will visit significant ecological sites around the city on their own. Professor Pickren will provide guidance via Zoom and Blackboard. This will typically involve students meeting with the professor via Zoom in the morning and then practicing research methods in the field in the afternoon. The course culminates in a series of reports on topics of significance to the environmental community in Chicago.

​For questions and more details about this course, please contact Dr. Graham Pickren    (gpickren@roosevelt.edu), assistant professor of Sustainability Studies. For help with registration as an RSC student, please contact Dr. Mike Bryson ([email protected]), Professor and Director of Sustainability Studies.