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Relevant Courses, Clinics and Practicums

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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

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to practice social entrepreneurship? You don't have to found your own company to make a difference. Everyone can learn from the social entrepreneurship mindset and skillset, and apply it in their own way to create social impact. In this course, we combine theory and practice, applying a systematic framework to guide students through the social entrepreneurship experience. We start by identifying a social or environmental challenge each student is interested in tackling. Students form interdisciplinary teams to immerse themselves in characterizing the challenge, ideating potential solutions, and building business models around those solutions. Social Entrepreneurship Lab is a safe space to experiment, iterate, prototype, test, and fail. You don't need to launch your venture, though some teams will. You'll meet alumni who launched new ventures and social entrepreneurs from New Haven and around the world.

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

 In the course, 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., state agency, community organization, other nongovernmental organization) 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. Class sessions and team meetings are conducted using a hybrid approach that combines in-person, all-virtual, and virtually connected classroom arrangements. This course should be of interest to graduate and professional students across the University and is open to Yale College juniors and seniors. In addition, this course is one of the options available to students to fulfill the practice requirement for the M.P.H. degree at YSPH and the capstone requirement for the M.E.M. degree at YSE. Students who plan to enroll must complete an application, which will be used to match each student with a clinic project. Check the course’s Canvas site or contact the Yale instructor at laura.bozzi@yale.edu for more information. Prerequisite: EHS 547 or permission of the instructor.

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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. 

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ENV 970a,b/LAW 30164 Environmental Protection Clinic Policy and Advocacy

Follows Law School Calendar
The Environmental Protection Clinic’s mission is to train students in environmental advocacy through interdisciplinary project work in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other public interest organizations. Students are assigned to teams of two-to-four members drawn from the Law School and the School of the Environment to work on discrete projects in collaboration with partner organizations. The clinic’s docket covers a wide range of environmental issues, with most projects integrating legal and policy components. In addition to covering current topics in environmental policy and principles of environmental justice, clinic seminars help students master the tools of effective environmental advocacy, including the ability to research law and science, write persuasively, and manage projects cooperatively.

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Global Social Entrepreneurship

GSE is a semester-long, practicum-focused course that links teams of Yale graduate students on consulting projects with social enterprises. SOM offers two GSEs: GSE India (which runs Fall-2 / Spring-1) and Spring GSE (which runs January – May). In Spring GSE 2024 we will likely be working with organizations based in Nairobi, Kenya. In both courses, we work with leading and emerging social enterprises (for-profit and non-profit) engaged in economic development, sustainable energy, education, healthcare, environmental conservation, affordable housing, and other fields.

GSE is by application only. Both GSEs are full-credit courses that fulfill SOM’s Global Studies Requirement. A few links about the GSE courses: 

More information on GSE India (MGT 529)

More information on Spring GSE (MGT 865)

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. In this 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 development and social entrepreneurship while contributing novel, concrete solutions to the housing affordability crisis in Connecticut. Working in teams directly with local community-based non-profits, students will co-create detailed development proposals and architectural designs anchored by affordable housing, but which will 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, students will be introduced to the history, theory, issues, and contemporary practices in the 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, student projects will center on community wealth building and equitable economic recovery in some of Connecticut’s most economically distressed neighborhoods, by proposing multi-sector, place-based projects that focus on housing, health, and economic development. 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 in the course will be organized into multi-disciplinary teams including law, management, and architecture students, who will ideate together and take on specific team roles, modeling real-world project development teams. Teams will be assigned to work with non-profit developers tackling development or redevelopment projects that include affordable housing. Facilities of the Yale Urban Design Workshop will be available to students of the course. Students may have the opportunity to continue their leadership in these projects following the end of the course, in a professional capacity, as they move towards implementation. Students will interact with their nonprofit partners, the Connecticut Commissioner of Housing, Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, and the Connecticut Green Bank. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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ENV 956b 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. 

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MGT 865 Global Social Entrepreneurship

The spring 2024 Global Social Entrepreneurship (GSE) course will be likely working with organizations in Kenya. 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.

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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. 

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MGT 826 Inclusive Economic Development Lab: Opportunity Zones in New Haven

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.

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ENV 970a,b/LAW 30164 Environmental Protection Clinic Policy and Advocacy

Follows Law School Calendar
The Environmental Protection Clinic’s mission is to train students in environmental advocacy through interdisciplinary project work in collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other public interest organizations. Students are assigned to teams of two-to-four members drawn from the Law School and the School of the Environment to work on discrete projects in collaboration with partner organizations. The clinic’s docket covers a wide range of environmental issues, with most projects integrating legal and policy components. In addition to covering current topics in environmental policy and principles of environmental justice, clinic seminars help students master the tools of effective environmental advocacy, including the ability to research law and science, write persuasively, and manage projects cooperatively.

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.

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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.

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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. The emphasis in each neighborhood will be on identifying and overcoming the tensions and conflicts between economic, social, and environmental objectives to develop a balanced strategy for each neighborhood that meets stakeholders’ goals while acknowledging the context of overarching regional, national, and global challenges and opportunities (e.g., climate change, demographic shifts). Toward that end, students are exposed to the detailed processes of local government as well as techniques used by city planners to collect and assess data and combine those quantitative tools with stakeholder engagement to develop strategies to achieve community vision. With a focus on interdisciplinary problem-solving and the collective project management resulting in a client-driven work product, students learn valuable skills for their future careers.

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

 In the course, 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., state agency, community organization, other nongovernmental organization) 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. Class sessions and team meetings are conducted using a hybrid approach that combines in-person, all-virtual, and virtually connected classroom arrangements. This course should be of interest to graduate and professional students across the University and is open to Yale College juniors and seniors. In addition, this course is one of the options available to students to fulfill the practice requirement for the M.P.H. degree at YSPH and the capstone requirement for the M.E.M. degree at YSE. Students who plan to enroll must complete an application, which will be used to match each student with a clinic project. Check the course’s Canvas site or contact the Yale instructor at laura.bozzi@yale.edu for more information. Prerequisite: EHS 547 or permission of the instructor.

Learn more