Whether you want just a taste of sustainability, or to dive all the way in, at Oxy it’s easy to incorporate sustainability themes into your education.
Sustainability Courses
Sustainability is a topic that traverses a wide range of fields, not limited to only the sciences. Each year, Oxy professors offer diverse courses related to sustainability, nature, and environmental justice. A few examples from Spring 2025:
- CTSJ 201: Environmental Injustice: Race, Poverty, and the Law
- FYS 69: The Arroyo Seco: Nature, Culture, and Justice in NELA
- FYS 75: Critical Environmental Justice
- RELS 120: How to Live in the Midst of Dying: Religion and Climate Change
- ECON 201: Sustainability Lab
- UEP 240: Urban Sustainability: Raising Animals as Part of Regenerative Agriculture
- UEP 247: Sustainable Oxy: Urban Agriculture and Sustainable Landscape Practicum
- UEP 300: Environmental Law and Policy
Majors, Minors, and Concentrations
Anderson Center for Environmental Science
The Anderson Center for Environmental Sciences is an interdisciplinary group of research-driven faculty, staff and students whose goals are studying Earth’s environment, solving environmental problems and developing the next generation of environmental scientists.
Environmental Economics Focus
The relationship between the economy and the environment can be pursued through elective courses as a focus within the Economics major.
Environmental Science Concentration
Explore earth processes and ecosystems as you develop environmental analysis and problem-solving skills. Undertake an Environmental Science concentration within either the Biology or Geology major.
Food Studies Minor
From a student-run organic garden to research on flavor and how the human mind processes it, the Food Studies minor at Occidental seeks to critically examine our relationship with food.
Marine Biology Concentration
Biology majors can pursue a marine biology emphasis, researching topics ranging from molecular methods for classification of marine bacteria to the effects of global warming on fisheries.
Urban and Environmental Policy
- Major: UEP is an interdisciplinary major that combines politics, planning, environmental policy, public health, urban studies, economics, sociology, and other disciplinary approaches. Topics covered include housing and community development; food and resource issues; air and water quality; race, gender and class relations; public health; globalization; and other topics at the local, state, national and international levels.
- Minor: The UEP minor provides the opportunity for students to understand the interconnection between "urban" and "environmental" and that issues of economic and environmental justice are integrally linked to where and how we live, work, play, eat, and go to school.
Campus Research Centers
Moore Lab of Zoology
The mission of the Moore Laboratory of Zoology is to answer outstanding questions about the origins of biodiversity and how species respond to environmental change by linking information from the habitats and genomes of species with physical specimens in their collection. Currently, 65,000 specimens, mostly bird study skins originating from Mexico and Latin America, are housed within the collection.
Urban & Environmental Policy Institute (UEPI)
UEPI is an applied research and advocacy center whose mission is to advance community-driven programs and policies to build healthy, thriving communities while achieving social, economic and environmental justice.
Vantuna Research Group
Since 1966, the Vantuna Research Group has been monitoring and researching the marine environment of Southern and Baja California. Their research program features both the longest continual time series studies of rocky reefs in the world and the largest spatial scale studies of reefs in the Southern California Bight.