Certificate Program

The Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience certificate is open to professional masters’ students as well as research-based Masters and Ph.D. students. This program focuses on the theories, methods, knowledge, and practical skills needed to work productively on hazard mitigation and climate change along the coast. This innovative and interdisciplinary program combines existing disciplinary coursework offered in several graduate programs. Students who complete this certificate will be well equipped to work on coastal risk and resilience issues within their own home disciplines.

Overview: The Certificate requires four (4) 3-credit courses. These include three common core courses plus an elective from outside your disciplinary focus area. If a course is not available in a particular year then a reasonable substitution is allowed.

Detailed Requirements:

Students must take three foundational transdisciplinary courses (Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Coastal Climate Risk and Resilience, Communicating Science with Decisionmakers, and Studio on Climate Risk and Resilience) and one elective course not in your home discipline. With permission from the certificate program’s faculty advisor, they may substitute an alternative elective course.

Required Courses (take all three):

16:712:500 Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Coastal Climate Risk and Resilience (3 credits, Fall Semester). This course will explore issues related to coastal risk and resilience by integrating perspectives from climate science, geography, sociology, economics, urban planning, ecology, and civil & environmental engineering. Each class session will center on a discussion led by a member of the faculty or by an outside guest and will focus on transdisciplinary learning, new perspectives, and current issues within the context of more than one disciplines. This course will introduce students to a broad conceptual modeling framework and encourage critical questioning of disciplinary scopes, and biases. The goal of the course will be for students to connect new knowledge among the different disciplines and create a deeper understanding related to human experience with coastal adaptation and resilience.

34:970:655 Communicating Science with Decision-Makers (3 credits, Spring Semester). This theory-and-practice course focuses on communicating science to policymakers, business leaders, and the general public. It emphasizes the interactive aspects of communication in which competency depends on both speaking and listening, and in which facts must be “constructed” according to contextual norms rather than merely transmitted. It will also include guest lectures by non-academic professionals on their career pathways and experiences. The course will be designed to introduce students to the latest research-based evidence about effective communication of risk, vulnerabilities and coastal science.

34:970:510 Studio on Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience (3 credits, Fall Semester). This studio or workshop pairs students with a client (such as a coastal community) to assess the risks posed to the client by climate change and strategies for managing that risk. This studio class helps integrate the disciplinary perspectives of participating graduate students and engage them in the development of land-use, capital improvements, or hazard-mitigation planning for a client, such as a coastal municipality. The studio experience exposes students to local lay knowledge, public decision-making procedures, and the challenges of contributing scientific information to contentious public policy debates.

Electives (Choose One):

In addition to these three core courses, certificate students are expected to take onr 3-credit elective courses in a focus area (system perspective) outside their home discipline. In consultation with your faculty advisor, choose an appropriate course from the following lists focusing on (1) natural systems, (2) socio-economic systems, or (3) engineered systems of coastal resilience. Select an elective from a focus area other than your own. For example, an engineer should choose a natural systems or socio-economic systems course, whereas an urban planner should choose a natural systems or engineering systems course. Reasonable substitutions are allowed.