Bachelor of Science, Major in Environmental Science

at EduCo - Western University Canada

Are you moved by crisis in Darfur? Do social movements such as the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street interest you? Do you want to work for a public service or a non-profit organisation? Then the Media and the Public Interest (MPI) program might be for you. The MPI program is the only one of its kind in Canada and connects issues of communication and media to social justice issues such as democracy, equity, class, race, and gender. Students in MPI examine social movements and how media can be used to further these causes. Some example courses in the MPI program include Alternative Media, Social Movements and Media, and Activism in Mainstream Media. A primary goal of the program is to connect media theory learned in the classroom to real world experiences. Students are encouraged to put what they learn to use. Many of the courses feature a service learning component or practicum that gives students the opportunity to volunteer in a community organisation.

The most flexible module option within the School of Health Studies, the modules in Health Sciences give students the opportunity to learn about and experience a broad range of topics that relate to health across the lifespan. Students in the Major, Specialization or Honors Specialization Health Sciences can expect to learn about youth and adolescent health, health in aging populations, health promotion, and health ethics. In their upper years, they may choose from a diverse selection of courses, ranging from disease mechanisms and embryology, to social media and health, healthcare law, and sexuality, gender and health.

Medical Cell Biology is the study of the cell, the basic building block of life. In Medical Cell Biology, you will learn how cells work together to form tissues, organs and the human body. You will also learn what happens when cells malfunction leading to diseases such as cancer.

An interdisciplinary and dynamic field, Women’s Studies has undergone impressive expansion in recent decades. In the Department of Women’s Studies and Feminist Research at Western, students study gender, and sexuality in terms of cultural norms and their implications from a variety of feminist perspectives. We explore how gender intersects with other axes of identity such as class, race, ethnicity, socio-economic standing, (dis)ability, age, and more. Encouraging the development of critical thinking skills, our discipline asks students to consider how knowledge gets produced and to what effect. We question how gendered understandings shape and shift our world in relation to local experience, historical realities, and the global present.

Geography and Environment at Western centres around the following sub-disciplines; Physical Geography, Geographic Information Science (GIS), Urban Studies and Environment, Development and Health. This broad, integrative perspective makes Western geographers employable in a wide range of occupations.

Don’t you love to dig into an idea until you really understand where it comes from and what it connects with? That’s what we do in Classics. The ancient Mediterranean world lives on in our modern experience. We see it in sports, medicine, sexuality, law, and politics—everywhere, really. We dive into the language, literature, philosophies, and archaeology of the Greek and Roman world.

Are you interested in understanding the universe and our place in it? Consider studying astrophysics at Western! Through the interaction of light and matter, you can access the universe through observatories around the world and in space. Astrophysicists at Western will help you explore black holes, exoplanets, meteors, the atmospheres of Earth and other planets, the dust and gas between the stars, and the evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. With the skills acquired in this module, our graduates stand out with their involvement in cutting-edge research, including the recent discovery of gravitational waves and new planets beyond our solar system.

The Major in Kinesiology provides flexibility in selecting Kinesiology courses allowing students to initially investigate courses throughout the broad scope of Kinesiology. With fewer Kinesiology course requirements than other modules students enroled in the major have the flexibility to incorporate more external electives within their degree. Students often combine a major in Kinesiology with a major from another discipline.

Western's School of Kinesiology offers undergraduate and graduate programs that allow students to explore the bioscientific and sociocultural aspects of human movement. Flexible program options at both the undergraduate and graduate levels allow students to tailor their program of study to achieve specific learning goals while learning from researchers and teachers who are experts in their fields.

Economics is a social science devoted to the study of scarcity, and how individuals, organisations, and governments make choices. The discipline’s guiding principle is found in the idea that all of these choices can most usefully be seen as decisions to allocate scarce resources across a range of competing uses. This single principle is always in play, and leads economists to study a wide array of social questions.

In the first year Economics courses you will be exposed to the use of this basic principle and the analytical tools that go with them in both the microeconomic and macroeconomic realm. The first of these (micro) refers to the study of choices made by individuals and/or individual firms, and how these decisions interact in markets. The macro segment then looks at how this principle allows us to better understand the behaviour of the economy in the aggregate. This leads to the study of unemployment, inflation, government budgets and international trade balances. These courses then provide the basis for all of the more senior – and more specialized – courses offered by the Department.

The Major in Economics Module, by itself, can be either a 3 or 4 year Degree. The Economics Major can be combined with a Major in another subject in order to create an Honors Double Major Degree. For the purposes of progression and graduation, ALL Honors Economics courses taken shall be counted as principal courses, and the requirements for both majors must be met in order to graduate with an Honors Double Major.

Our department’s expertise encapsulates a wide array of interdisciplinary strengths across feminist theory and various feminist approaches to health studies, media studies, history, globalization and development studies, philosophy, law, writing studies and literature, and visual culture, as well as significant work in queer theory and sexuality studies. We are one of only a few units across the University recognized as a Department in both the Faculty of Social Science and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Further, we have a rich network of Affiliate faculty members appointed in many other departments across Western who are integral members of our learning community. We also promote feminist scholarship through provision for resident scholars, a Distinguished Speakers Series, faculty colloquia, annual conferences (including a graduate conference, and Flaunting It!, our annual undergraduate conference on gender and sexuality).