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General Studies Requirements
The Earth and Atmospheric Science department offers a variety of General Studies courses in Natural and Physical Science, Social and Behavioral Science, and Global Diversity
The General Studies program provides the foundation for the Bachelor’s degree. Students develop thinking, reasoning, and communication skills while discovering new ideas and expanding their views. The coursework is designed to create the opportunity for learning across different disciplines and builds experiences for students as they grow into lifelong learners.
General Studies Courses in EAS
Please click on a plus (+) for more information about the course:
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading, writing, and mathematics preassessment placement tests
Description: This course introduces students to environmental concepts and issues from an interdisciplinary approach. Students will gain an understanding of the scientific methods and techniques needed to understand the and analyze environmental issues such as ecology, human population growth, soils and agriculture, deforestation, urbanization, air pollution, freshwater resources, ocean pollution, climate change, fossil fuels, alternative energy sources, waste disposal, as well as environmental ethics and policy. Course topics will be complemented with computer exercises.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): ENV 1200 or GEG 1000 or GEG 1100 or GEG 1300 or GEG 1910 or GEL 1010 or MTR 1600
Description: In this course, students examine the roles culture, economics, and politics play in the management of critical global resources. Students analyze case studies and empirical data to critically evaluate the drivers of resource use and environmental impacts around the world.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences, Global Diversity
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading, writing, and mathematics preassessment placement tests
Description: This course presents the study of the formation, behavior, and interaction of social, political, cultural, and economic regions throughout the world.
General Studies: Social and Behavioral Sciences, Global Diversity
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SS2
Credits: 3
Description: This course explores the various elements of the physical environment and interactions between the elements. The course emphasizes the atmosphere (weather and climate), the lithosphere (soils, geology, and landforms), and the hydrosphere (oceans, streams, and groundwater).
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading, writing, and mathematics preassessment placement tests
Description: This course provides an introduction to geographic perspectives, concepts, and methods as they apply to the study of human activities. Emphasis is placed on explaining human spatial patterns and their consequences. Topics covered include population, migration, language, religion, folk and economic development, political systems, and resources.
General Studies: Social and Behavioral Sciences, Global Diversity
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SS2
Credits: 3
Description: This course is an introduction to the transdisciplinary field of sustainability that examines current debates about how to respond to the problems of climate change, environmental degradation, and social inequalities from the local to the global scales. The course begins with an overview of the historical conditions that continue to shape the current human imprint on the global environment. It also explores how different perspectives from the natural and social sciences can be used to examine the environmental implications of human endeavors. Throughout the course, emergent sustainable practices, such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture and food systems, and urban sustainability, are discussed to show how communities across the world are finding sustainable and equitable solutions.
University Requirement(s): Social and Behavioral Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading and writing placement tests
Description: In this course, water is examined as a natural and societal resource using local, national, and international examples. Landforms and processes related to water such as the hydrologic cycle, watersheds, surface water, and groundwater are surveyed. Students learn about water use in early civilizations, water and culture, water quality and treatment, and water law. The critical issue of water conservation and scarcity is reviewed in the context of the social, legal, political, economic, and physical infrastructure that controls water around the world.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences, Global Diversity
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: 3
Description: Geography of Colorado presents the study of the physical, economic, and cultural features of Colorado. These features include climate, landforms, history, water resources, energy and minerals, mining, soil, natural vegetation, agriculture, population characteristics, the economy, current issues, as well as their interactions, and the overall geographic setting.
General Studies: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SS2
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading and writing placement tests
Description: This class explores why people of color and lower income populations are subject to the disproportionate burden of pollution and contamination and analyzes collective struggles of affected people to democratize access to a clean environment. Environmental justice is at the intersection of social justice and environmentalism and helps us to better understand geographies of socio-environmental injustices and how people take actions to make the places where they live, work, and play safer. Students learn how issues such as air pollution, waste management, unsafe drinking water, working conditions on farms, food deserts, climate change, and other environmental hazards affect people living in low income communities across the United States.
General Studies: Social and Behavioral Sciences, Ethnic Studies & Social Justice, Multicultural
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Junior or higher standing
Description: Students in this course learn how nature, culture, and socio-political relations have shaped the landscapes of Middle and South America from a geographical perspective. The emphasis of the course is to examine the intersection of environment and society; that is, how power relations are imbricated with people’s use of environments and access to resources. Specifically, the course focuses on how major regional patterns of political ecologies of development have shaped and continue to define Latin America’s geography. Topics include development conditions, resource use and environmental politics, extractivism, deforestation and biodiversity conservation, agrarian and environmental struggles, indigeneity politics, and climate change-induced disruptions, and emigration and refugees. Within this perspective, the course provides an understanding of how sociopolitical and economic issues with environmental factors are part of the connections between the United States and Latin America.
General Studies: Global Diversity, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): GEG 1300 or NAS 1000 or PSC 1010 or junior or higher standing
Description: In this course, we examine Indigenous Peoples’ relationships to land and power in North America with a focus on the United States. Colonial legacies of dispossession, genocide, and the reservation system frame how we discuss and interpret physical and symbolic violence against Indigenous Peoples. We begin with a historical geographic exploration of Indigenous land use patterns and how European arrival and invasion radically destabilized Native cultures. U.S. government policies and actions including the establishment of reservations and Tribal governments illustrate how institutions shape contemporary political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental relationships. Contemporary issues such as natural resource extraction, economic development, intersectionality, and cultural resilience influence the experiences of Native Americans on and off reservations.
General Studies: Social and Behavioral Sciences, Multicultural, Ethnic Studies & Social Justice
Credits: 4
Description: This course introduces the basic theories, concepts, and assumptions used in geology, utilizing both lecture and laboratory components. It includes earth’s internal systems from core to crust, as well as the dynamics of the lithosphere with its processes, products, and effects on the environment. Students will learn to identify common rocks and minerals.
Field Trips: A field trip is required.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC1
Credits: 3
Description: This science course focuses on the State of Colorado to introduce basic concepts, principles, theories, and assumptions in geology. The course covers Colorado’s major geological provinces and landforms; common minerals, rocks, and fossils; geologic processes; geologic resources and hazards; and important events in Colorado’s geologic history.
Field Trips: One field trip is required.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: 4
Prerequisite(s): GEL 1010 or GEG 1100 or permission of instructor
Description: This course presents the origin and history of the Earth as well as the evolution of its life, based on the rock and fossil record. The course also reviews the changing geography of the Earth through geologic time, emphasizing the theory of plate tectonics.
Field Trips: One field trip is required.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC1
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading, writing, and mathematics pre-assessment placement tests
Description: This introductory course studies the world’s oceans, including geographic, geologic and physical features of the ocean basins and the physical and chemical properties of ocean water. Other major topics include ocean exploration, ocean waves, currents and tides, air-sea interactions, marine ecology, and geologic history. The course emphasizes the use and control of ocean resources and the impact of ocean pollution.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: (4, includes lab)
Note: This course can only count for General Studies credit beginning in Fall 2022.
Prerequisites: None
Description: This course serves as an introduction to technologies used for visualization, measurement, and analysis of geographical features that occur on earth. Students learn basic concepts needed to understand maps, global positioning system (GPS), geographic information science (GIS) and remote sensing of the environment. Topics include the nature and characteristics of geospatial technologies, concepts of spatial data, principles and methods of capturing and representing spatial data, and methods of analysis and interpretation of maps and visualizations. This course addresses basic analysis and spatial problem-solving skills. Intermediate spatial analysis skills are taken up in subsequent GIS courses.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading, writing, and mathematics pre-assessment placement tests
Description: This course introduces the fundamental physical processes in the atmosphere–heat and energy, temperature, pressure, wind, clouds, precipitation, and stability. These concepts provide the basis for understanding weather systems, such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes. These processes are also applied to climatic patterns and the impacts of human activity on weather and climate, such as air pollution and climate change. An optional 1-credit lab course, MTR 2020 Weather and Climate Lab for Scientists, is available for students interested in additional experience in the measurement and analysis of atmospheric data, and is required for some science programs.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading, writing, and mathematics preassessment placement tests.
Description: This course presents the science behind global climate change from an Earth systems and atmospheric science perspective. These concepts then provide the basis to explore the effect of global warming on regions throughout the world. This leads to the analysis of the observed and predicted impacts of climate change on these regions; the effect of these changes on each region’s society, culture, and economy; and the efforts of these regions to mitigate or adapt to climate change. The interdependence of all nations will be discussed in regards to fossil fuel-rich regions, regions responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, and regions most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences, Global Diversity
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC2
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): Minimum performance standard scores on reading and writing pre-assessments
Description: The course examines the application of fundamental scientific principles in biology and earth systems by examining the basic building blocks of life, evolution of life, the human body, ecosystem structure and development, terrestrial formations and surface processes, atmospheric processes, the solar system, and the universe. This class includes laboratory experiments, which focus on biology and earth science.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC1
Credits: 3
Prerequisite(s): MTH 2620
Description: The course examines the nature of energy and matter, their interactions and changes, and the application of fundamental scientific concepts to the study of our natural world. These concepts are explored through hands-on laboratory experiments that focus on basic physics and chemistry principles.
General Studies: Natural and Physical Sciences
Guaranteed Transfer: GT-SC1
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Email UsPhone: 303-615-1177
Email: [email protected]
Office Location:
Science Building
2nd Floor – #2028
Auraria Campus
Mailing Address:
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Campus Box 22
P.O. Box 173362
Denver, CO 80217-3362