Environmental Class Recommendations

Northwestern offers a wide range of environmental-related courses. With such a varied and vast course list, it can be hard to determine what environmental classes are the best ones to take. The wide range of factors to consider like workload, professor teaching style, and content make narrowing down the list difficult even with CTECs. 

Here, I’ll go through some of the best environmental classes I’ve taken. For some context, I’m double majoring in environmental science and sociology and am planning to pursue a career in environmental law and policy. I’ll be discussing some characteristics of these classes and my personal experiences with them.

ENVR_POL 390 / HISTORY 251

The Politics of Disaster: A Global Environmental History

Professor Barnett

This class was absolutely fascinating. It discussed a wide range of environmental disasters, such as the Black Plague, Fukushima, and Hurricane Katrina, and how they interact with people and societies. The course completely reshaped the ways I view natural disasters by examining the human elements that anything we consider disasters have and focusing on societal impacts, such as how natural disasters exacerbate inequalities.

The class was mostly graded based on two exams and one final project. The two exams included short answer and essay questions and were very fair. They stuck with the course material and were not too difficult. The final project is a critical bibliography typically focused on climate change, although when I took the class it was on the COVID-19 pandemic. The project was genuinely interesting and allowed me to pursue my own specific interests under the broader assignment requirements.

Even though I took this class asynchronously, Professor Barnett was a fantastic professor. Her lectures were very engaging and she focused on content that is both interesting and extremely important, such as issues of environmental justice.

Overall, I would absolutely recommend this class to anyone looking to take a class in the EPC or History departments. The course also fulfills a historical studies distribution requirement, making it perfect for any Weinberg students in need of an interesting and relatively easy distro.

CHEMISTRY 306

Environmental Chemistry

Professor Farha

As someone who suffered through Chem 171 and 172, I was terrified to take another class in the chemistry department, let alone a 300 level course. Surprisingly, this class ended up being one of the easiest and most interesting courses I have taken at Northwestern.

The entire class was based around group presentations. Each lecture was taught by a different group and the presentation made up almost all of your grade. That may sound daunting, especially since presentation groups and dates were randomly assigned. However, Professor Farha did not grade the presentations harshly and all of the topics were very interesting. While the presentations are a fair bit of work, they are not unreasonable. The biggest upside to this course structure is the fact that, once your presentation is done, you basically have no more work for the entire quarter. If your presentation is late in the quarter, you can still just relax and coast through the course until you start your project. 

With no exams or cumulative assignments, this is a wonderful class to take if you want to be able to learn interesting material in a relaxed environment. A lot of the content can get very technical, but the grading system makes this complex material interesting, not stressful. 

CIV_ENV 303

Environmental Law and Policy

Professor Harley

This is another class that I was afraid to take because of the department. As a Weinberg student, this is one of my first McCormick classes, so I was worried it would be really technical and difficult. Upon starting this class, I discovered that it truly does not belong in McCormick; it feels like an EPC class.

The class takes up a three hour block every Thursday, which can be very daunting and I would be lying if I said sometimes I didn’t almost fall asleep. However, I would consider it absolutely worth it. Professor Harley is a great lecturer and goes through the material at a very steady pace. His thorough explanations of complex laws teaches you a large amount without making you feel overwhelmed with learning so much in one chunk of time. He also includes at least one break in every class, which definitely makes the long class much more bearable.

I was terrified when I saw that the syllabus said the final exam was worth 72% of the grade until, on the first day, Professor Harley told us that the practice exam already posted within the syllabus was almost the exact same as the final. The majority of the homework for the class is writing practice exam answers and, after each set of answers is submitted, Professor Harley goes through the correct answers. This means that, when the final rolls around (which is take home, open note, and you have a week to finish) you will already have it basically completed.

I would recommend this class to anyone interested in American environmental law that also is looking for a relatively relaxed and straightforward class. While getting a good grade in this class does take some effort, with that effort put in, getting an A should be a walk in the park.