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Subject Discipline And Course Number: BIOL C141

Course Title: Environmental Science: The Human Environment

Instructor: Dick Dodge

Units: 3

Hours: Online Course

User Level: Intermediate (click here to for definition of User Levels). "How to Navigate this Class" will provide tips if you are a first time user.

Textbooks and Other Required Materials for Course: Please consult the Syllabus

Course Description: Human interaction with the lives and activities of other organism and with the environment. The human role, place and responsibility in environmental issues, concerns and problems facing the contemporary world. Local, regional and global environmental issues will be considered from an objective scientific perspective.

Instructor's Comments: This is a course in thinking critically about the environment. The contemporary environmental issues can best be considered from a scientific perspective. The scientist acquires knowledge through observation, experimentation and objective evaluation of all knowledge about an issue. The validation of this knowledge can only be tested through ongoing observation and experimentation. Scientific thinking about the environment is considered through inductive and deductive reasoning, which demands objectivity and intellectual integrity and must include all sources of evidence, not just those, which support ones beliefs or political ideology.

All measurement, observation or evidence derived through science involves some level of approximation or uncertainty. Scientific conclusion or opinion offered without a statement of the degree of approximation or uncertainty must be considered speculative at best and without scientific merit in the extreme. The use of science to tout a political or social agenda does not advance the body of scientific knowledge and in the long run discredits the social agenda being advanced. Science seeks knowledge based on evidence untainted by political or social manipulation.

Technology is not science. Technology and science are interactive and growth of each is stimulated by this interaction. Decision making about environmental issues must include economics, society, culture, values and politics as well as creditable scientific information, which can be verified, to achieve social justice within the framework of our legal system, which forms the basis of the American Culture.

About the Instructor: Dick Dodge is a product of the California public education system. Undergraduate studies at San Francisco State in the 50's, followed by graduate work and a Ph.D. in arid lands ecology and soil science at the University of Arizona launched a 40-year teaching career in the California community colleges. Dick arrived at Cerro Coso Community College in 1976 after several years in Washington DC as the Director of Education and Communications for the American Institute of Biological Science.

While at Cerro Coso, Dick has taught many Biology courses. His majority teaching assignment has emphasized the field sciences, including such courses as Botany, Ecology and Environmental Science as well as Agriculture, Geography, and Critical Thinking. While a full time Professor at CCCC, Dick was active in field investigations and research related to ecology, environmental management and documentation for regional lands restoration. His interest in arid lands agriculture, plant ecology and soil science and the application of his science to contemporary environmental issues resulted in the formation of “Ecology Consultants Associated,” the development of a native plant nursery and pistachio orchards, a micro-irrigation management company, restoration ecology consulting, and natural resource management.