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In 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that, "warming of the climate system is unequivocal," that "it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause," and that, "this represents a substantial multi-century climate change commitment created by past, present and future emissions of CO2". Designed for students from any discipline, this course will provide an integrated introduction to the science of climate change. Through lecture, discussion, and lab, you will be challenged to understand the systems controlling Earth's climate, the processes by which humans can alter these systems, the ways in which climate change is currently manifesting in various Earth systems, and projections for how our climate may evolve in the decades ahead.

This course explores the life of the geologic past, including the application of the study of fossils to evolution, paleoecology, biogeography, and biostratigraphy. Students explore topics from the origin of life to the impact of humanity on biodiversity. We explore questions such as "How did animals first evolve?", "How has life, from microbes to humans, altered Earth's climate, atmosphere, and oceans?", and "How does the distribution of organisms in time and space tell us about past climate and geological processes?". Students choose individual research topics about fossils to investigate as part of a term project.

Plate tectonics provides a global framework to understand earthquakes, volcanoes, ocean basins, and mountain belts. Tectonics combines several geoscientific disciplines to assess processes such as mountain building, continental rifting, and subduction. In this course students will investigate deformation of the lithosphere at plate boundaries, the historical development of plate tectonics, connections between geodynamics and seismic hazards, and the driving forces of plate tectonics such as mantle flow, plate dynamics, heat transfer, and lithosphere rheology, through hands-on projects and discussions.

This laboratory and field course explores the sedimentary record, examining the ways by which earth scientists decipher the geologic history of Earth's surface. By studying sediments, sedimentary rocks, and stratigraphy, we can answer questions such as "Where were ancient shorelines?", "What did Minnesota's ancient watery environments look like?", "Where were the tropics in the geologic past?", and "How and when did the Appalachian Mountains erode?". Students explore major concepts such as sequence stratigraphy, biostratigraphy, basin analysis, geochemistry, and geochronology through a series of hands-on projects in which they solve geologic puzzles. A required 3-4-day field trip provides a field context in which to interpret sedimentary rocks.