Spring 2027

Environmental Studies: Social Science Perspectives

Environmental Studies: Social Science Perspectives explores social science approaches to environment-society relations at local and global scales, tracing origins, impacts, and responses to environmental concerns.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 8

Past student reviews · Robert Beattie

The workload included essays with about a week to complete, open-note quizzes, and a final exam consisting of old quiz questions, which students found not stressful at all.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify different social science approaches that can be used to understand environment-society relations

  • Analyze and explain how social, economic, and political conditions affect the environment and environmental issues

  • Explain the social, economic and/or environmental dimensions of the sustainability challenges of population growth, natural resource consumption, and market economies

  • Analyze objects, ideas, and current events using an environment and society perspective

  • Describe the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of issues like climate change and environmental justice and identify potential tradeoffs and interrelationships among these dimensions at a level appropriate to the course

  • Demonstrate writing that shows mastery of evidence-based critical thinking

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

Not open to students with credit forGEOG/​ENVIR ST 337

ENVIRST 112 used by

“Used by” includes alternatives; linked courses may have other requirements. This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

ROBERT BEATTIE is recorded teaching in Spring 2013, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Fall 2023, Fall 2024, Fall 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

SAMER ALATOUT is recorded teaching in Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, Fall 2018. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Robert Beattie

Students described the course as engaging and thought-provoking, with a perfect level of breadth and difficulty for an introductory environmental studies class.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2023: 3.49 GPA, 75.5% A/AB (n=233 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.52 GPA, 79.8% A/AB (n=223 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.52 GPA, 80.9% A/AB (n=194 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Robert Beattie

The workload included essays with about a week to complete, open-note quizzes, and a final exam consisting of old quiz questions, which students found not stressful at all.

Past student reviews · Robert Beattie

One student found the lectures boring and noted that TAs graded assignments inconsistently, despite the exams being easy and the reading load being high.

Topics

  • Environment-society relationships at local and global scales
  • Social origins, impacts, and responses to environmental concerns
  • Sustainability challenges including population growth and resource consumption
  • Climate change and environmental justice

Skills

  • Identify social science approaches for understanding environment-society relations
  • Analyze how social, economic, and political conditions affect the environment
  • Explain dimensions of sustainability challenges like population growth and resource consumption
  • Analyze objects, ideas, and current events through an environment-society lens
  • Describe dimensions and tradeoffs of issues like climate change and environmental justice
  • Demonstrate writing with evidence-based critical thinking

Grades

Historical instructor

Spring 2027 · Projected

Before grades are released

– average GPA

Approximate 80% prediction interval

About this estimate

The course’s semester-average GPA, not an individual student’s grade. The center uses 4 recent terms, weighted toward recent results.

The range uses the finite-sample 80th-percentile rank of absolute errors from earlier same-season forecasts. Each forecast uses only records from earlier terms. At least four forecasts are required; bounds are rounded outward and limited to 0–4. This is an empirical estimate: changing instructors or grading policies can reduce its coverage.

8 earlier forecasts · 0.09 GPA average error.

Grades over time

Through Spring 2027

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "a566cf95ce55adcf2e8ff8bcec7eb97d090af7b31f020ffed3826c3539bcb557",
  "requirements_status": "needs_review",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}