Skip to main content

Relevent Courses, Clinics and Practicums

Text

You could spend hours finding all the courses, clinics, and practicums at Yale focusing on sustainability, clean energy, public health, social entrepreneurship, environmental justice, social enterprises, environmental protection and more...where students can learn the skills needed to address today's most pressing problems for people and the planet

We've taken the time to pull together some really interesting and relevant course experiences from across Yale for you to consider!

Are we missing something?  Let us know and we'll add it!

Courses

Courses

Fall

MGT 612 Social Entrepreneurship Lab

This is a practice-based course where students form teams to tackle a social or environmental challenge of their choice. This is an introductory course with no requirements and you don't need to have an idea to join. You'll learn how to organize information about a topic of your choice, talk to people affected by it, design a solution and build a business plan around that solution. You'll meet guest social entrepreneurs from New Haven and around the world. You'll also read Dr. Chahine's textbook which covers all the basics, "Social Entrepreneurship: building impact step by step." M/W, 4:10-5:30 or 6-7:20pm

More about the faculty lead here

EPH 555 / ENV 959 Clinic in Climate Justice, Law, and Public Health

Applications due August 15

In this course, taught by Drs. Laura Bozzi and Daniel Carrión, interdisciplinary student teams carry out applied projects at the intersection of climate justice, law and public policy, and public health. Each team works with a partner organization (e.g., community organization or other non-profit, state agency) to study, design, and implement a project, typically through community-based participatory research practices. The course affords the opportunity to have a real-world impact by applying concepts and competencies learned in the classroom. This semester, clinic projects will address issues of energy justice, indoor air quality, energy efficiency/weatherization and building electrification, and the health impacts of climate change; projects will focus on Connecticut and Massachusetts communities. Students find the practical experience and real-world impact of this course to be very rewarding, but it is also a lot of work. Students are expected to spend 8-10 hours per week outside of class and team meetings on course-related work. The clinic gives the opportunity to apply knowledge and skills learned in coursework to an important problem related to the course themes. Useful (but not required) knowledge and skills for one or more of the projects include environmental justice; climate change and public health; community engagement; exposure science and emissions modeling; community-based participatory research; policy review, research, and analysis; reviewing peer-reviewed and gray literature; qualitative research, including conducting focus groups and analyzing qualitative data; ​​survey design and deployment; Spanish (speaking and written); and health communications. The course will meet on Thursdays, 1-2:50 PM in LEPH (Yale School of Public Health, 60 College St.).

Learn more

ENV 962 Tribal Resources and Sovereignty Clinic 
This clinic will identify and describe the varieties of tribal resources focusing on public lands and the limitation of the management prerogatives facing Tribal Nations under the current legal regime. It will explore those resources governed by the trust duty and the federal government’s role. The emerging green economy is revealing new resources and opportunities for tribes. It will also investigate the relations between tribes, states, and private actors in this sector.  This will be a graduate-level course. This course has no prerequisites and is not capped. It requires an application. The clinic will be offered both Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in both semesters and priority for spring semester will be given to students enrolled for fall. 

Learn more

Global Social Entrepreneurship

Launched in 2008 at the Yale School of Management, the Global Social Entrepreneurship (GSE) India course links teams of Yale students with social enterprises based in India. GSE is committed to channeling the skills of Yale students to assist Indian organizations to expand their reach and impact on “base of the pyramid” communities. Yale students partner with mission-driven social entrepreneurs (SEs) to focus on a specific management challenge that the student/SE teams work together to address during the semester. GSE has worked with more than 50 leading and emerging Indian social enterprises engaged in economic development, sustainable energy, women’s empowerment, education, environmental conservation, and affordable housing. The course covers both theoretical and practical issues, including case studies and discussions on social enterprise, developing a theory of change and related social metrics, financing social businesses, the role of civil society in India, framing a consulting engagement, managing team dynamics, etc.

Learn more about the faculty lead here

MGT 632/ARCH 4293 Housing Connecticut: Developing Healthy and Sustainable Neighborhoods

Enrollment in this course is by application. Please submit a statement of interest to kate.cooney@yale.edu including relevant coursework and experience. In this inaugural interdisciplinary clinic taught between the School of Architecture, School of Law, and School of Management, and organized by the Yale Urban Design Workshop, students will gain hands-on, practical experience in architectural and urban design, development and social entrepreneurship while contributing novel solutions to the housing affordability crisis. Working in teams directly with local community-based non-profits, students will co-create detailed development proposals anchored by affordable housing, but which also engage with a range of community development issues including environmental justice, sustainability, resilience, social equity, identity, food scarcity, mobility, and health. Through seminars and workshops with Yale faculty and guest practitioners in the field, students will be introduced to the history, theory, issues, and contemporary practices in this field, and will get direct feedback on their work. Offered in partnership with the Connecticut Department of Housing (DOH) as part of the Connecticut Plan for Healthy Cities, proposals will have the opportunity to receive funding from the State both towards the implementation of rapidly deployed pilot projects during the course period, as well as towards predevelopment activities for larger projects, such as housing rehabilitation or new building construction. Students will interact with the Connecticut Commissioner of Housing and the Connecticut Green Bank. 

Learn more

ENV 980a (Hybrid) Social Justice in the Global Food System Capstone

This course examines social and environmental justice dimensions of today’s globalized food system. Using a critical participatory action research (cPAR) approach, we connect theory to practice through a project with partnering community food and justice organizations. Seminar discussions explore topics connected to the course project including: food sovereignty, agroecology, Black agrarianism, migration/immigration, and the Right to Food; the relevance of structural violence to food system inequities; and how land grabbing or food insecurity are connected to relative power on the global stage.

Learn more

 

Spring

ENV 742b Fundamentals of Working with People

Using environmental science to help inform and change human actions is a key challenge for environmental managers. Doing so requires that professionals be able to work effectively with a wide range of people across different scales, including: (1) understanding their own values and ways of working, as well as those of others; (2) forming, working in, and leading teams reflecting a diversity of experiences and skills; and (3) navigating and influencing organizations and networks within which they are working. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the scholarship being done (mostly within management fields) on how best to make these connections, as well as the ways individuals are putting those lessons learned into action.

Learn more

ENV 635b Renewable Energy Project Finance

The course is a highly interactive practicum, taught by Daniel Gross (a Yale College, SOM and YSE alumni) who brings over 20 years of expertise in deploying clean energy at scale through innovative finance and investing mechanisms. This course exposes students to real-world tools of project finance as well as the theory underlying them. In place of a textbook, students are provided with approximately 400 pages of actual project documents used for a U.S. wind energy project constructed relatively recently. The document set is akin to what one would encounter if working for a utility project developer, project finance lender or infrastructure equity investment firm. This course continues to be one of the largest elective courses at YSE or SOM. This past year, due to incredibly high enrollment in the course with over 200 students taking the course, CBEY provided special support for the course.  We identified and hired 5 alumni, who were previously teaching fellows for the course, to support the evaluation and grading of the student deliverables.  This allowed all the students who were interested in taking the course to participate.

Learn more

ENV 953b Sustainable Business Capstone Consulting

The intended outcome of this course is to provide you with a ‘capstone’ experience; consulting to established organizations confronting real-life challenges at the intersection of business and environmental sustainability. The course is designed for you to apply tools and insights gained in this and other courses to a defined project, creating deliverables that will be useful to the partner organizations.
This course is designed to help prepare anyone who wishes to become a consultant after graduation; though it is also intended to be useful for those that intend engaging with consultants in their career post-Yale. In short, there is hopefully something in it for many of you! The brief from the client will be topical and relevant to challenges and opportunities faced by their organization and intersect business and environmental opportunity. It is also likely to surface potential trade-offs and require addressing cross-cutting critical issues of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion; all complicated by living through, and emerging from, the pandemic. Consulting teams will be consistently applying tools learnt in this and other courses, and the clients will be on hand to provide insight and guidance at points throughout the term.

Learn more

ENV 819b Strategies for Land Conservation

This is a professional seminar on private land conservation strategies and techniques, with particular emphasis on the legal, financial, and management tools used in the United States. The seminar is built around presentations by guest speakers from land conservation organizations. Speakers are assigned topics across the land conservation spectrum, from identification of target sites, through the acquisition process, to ongoing stewardship of the land after the deal is done. The tools used to protect land are discussed, including the basics of real estate law, conservation finance, and project/organization management. Students are required to undertake a clinical project with a local land conservation organization. Enrollment limited to twenty-five; preference to second-year students if limit reached. 

Learn more

MGT 865 Global Social Entrepreneurship

The spring 2023 Global Social Entrepreneurship (GSE) course will be likely working with organizations in Brazil. Like the GSE India course (MGT 529), Spring GSE links teams of Yale students with local social enterprises, channeling the skills of Yale students to assist the organizations to expand their reach and impact on “base of the pyramid” communities. Yale students partner with mission-driven social entrepreneurs (SEs) to focus on a specific management challenge that the student/SE teams work together to address during the semester. The course covers both theoretical and practical issues, including case studies and discussions on social enterprise, developing a theory of change and related social metrics, financing social businesses, the role of civil society, framing a consulting engagement, managing team dynamics, etc.

Learn more about the faculty lead here

ENV 962 Tribal Resources and Sovereignty Clinic 
This clinic will identify and describe the varieties of tribal resources focusing on public lands and the limitation of the management prerogatives facing Tribal Nations under the current legal regime. It will explore those resources governed by the trust duty and the federal government’s role. The emerging green economy is revealing new resources and opportunities for tribes. It will also investigate the relations between tribes, states, and private actors in this sector.  This will be a graduate-level course. This course has no prerequisites and is not capped. It requires an application. The clinic will be offered both Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. Students are strongly encouraged to enroll in both semesters and priority for spring semester will be given to students enrolled for fall. 

Learn more

MGT 826 Inclusive Economic Development Lab

This lab course features a different theme each spring and provides opportunities for students taking UPED in the Fall (or those coming in without it) to focus in a deeper way on one of the components of IED. Past years' themes have included: Charting the Opportunity in Opportunity Zones (Spring 2019) and Rethinking Community Engagement and the Role of Narratives in IED (Spring 2020). See iedl.yale.edu for more details on prior IEDL deliverables. For Spring 2021, the Lab will focus on Minority-owned Business Development and Support. The course would invite guest speakers nationally to help us think through the current state of knowledge and examine cutting-edge models to support, capitalize, network, grow and integrate minority-owned businesses into a regional and global economy as a strategy for inclusive economic development. As in previous years, the Lab will provide opportunities for students to engage with key actors in the focal neighborhoods in New Haven and a class project that will provide a set of analyses that city actors can use to navigate this new opportunity.

Learn more about the faculty lead here

ENV 970a,b/LAW 30164 Environmental Protection Clinic Policy and Advocacy (Follows Law School Calendar)

The clinic’s mission is to train students in environmental advocacy through skills-based seminars, interdisciplinary project work, and collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other significant environmental organizations. Students are assigned to teams of two-to-four members drawn from both the Law School and the School of the Environment. Teams work on a project developed in collaboration with client organizations, with most projects having both legal and policy components. In addition to covering substantive areas of environmental law, clinic seminars help students master the tools of effective environmental advocacy, including the abilities to research law and science, write and cite persuasively, navigate environmental organizations, and manage projects cooperatively. Enrollment is limited to eighteen. For all questions, please e-mail swhillans@nrdc.org Note: Attendance at the first class meeting is mandatory for admitted students and for those on the waiting list who wish to remain in consideration for admission if a place becomes available. Admitted students must confirm their participation in advance of the first class by a date designated by the instructors. A no-drop policy applies.

Learn more

Climate, Animals, Food, and Environment Law & Policy Lab (“CAFE Lab”) (30241)

Students in the CAFE Lab will work with faculty, outside experts, and non-governmental organizations to develop innovative litigation and legislative initiatives to bring systemic change to the global food industry, which is one of the top contributors to climate change, animal suffering, human exploitation, and environmental degradation worldwide. The Lab’s primary focus areas for 2022-23 include litigation to address GHG emissions from industrial agriculture and legislative models to hold industrial food producers accountable for the currently uncounted, externalized costs of industrial agriculture for animals, workers, communities, and the environment. 

Learn more

ENV 985b Capstone: Neighborhood Planning Workshop

This capstone workshop provides an opportunity for students to apply the theory of practice developed in ENV 817 (or comparable study/experience) to a real-world, local urban planning project as part of an interdisciplinary student team. Up to two teams of up to six students each will work together, for a client, to develop a strategy for a neighborhood in New Haven or its environs. 

Learn more

ENV 971b Land Use Clinic

This course explores the multifaceted discipline of land use and urban planning and their associated ecological implications. Numerous land use strategies are discussed, including identifying and defining climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, including affordable housing, community revitalization, energy development, and siting, equitable community engagement, transit-oriented development, building and neighborhood energy conservation, distressed building remediation, jobs, and housing balance, coastal resiliency, and biological carbon sequestration.

Learn more

Spring 2024

ENV 979b Climate Solutions Capstone: Sub-National Actors

This capstone course provides students the opportunity to work in teams with clients from state government, city government, academic institutions and/or the non-profit sector.  Representative clients may include the State of Connecticut, the City of New Haven, the US Climate Alliance, SustainableCT, Yale University, AudubonCT, the Trust for Public Land, Save the Sound, or similar organizations. Students will analyze, model, and/or implement de-carbonization policies and programs in key sectors, including electricity, buildings, transportation, materials management, and/or natural/working lands.

Learn more