Courses

As part of the Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health trainees are required to complete 16 credits of course work that provides a foundation in Biogeoscience, Environmental Health, and Statistics across topics that span air, water, and climate. The required core courses are: Colloquium (2 credits), Applied Research Methods  (2 credits), Internship course (0-4 credits) and are listed below.

Colloquium and Applied Research Methods

  • GRS BI/EE 764 or SPH EH 799: Colloquium in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health
  • GRS BI/EE 765 or SPH EH 797: Applied Research Methods in Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health

Internship Course

GRS BI/EE 795 or SPH EH 795: Urban Biogeoscience and Environmental Health: From Research to Policy

Additional requirements are one course in Biogeoscience (4 credits), one course in Environmental Health (4 credits), and one course in Statistics (4 credits). Below are the approved BU URBAN Courses. You can select one course from each category to fulfill your requirements. You may also petition to count a course not listed below towards your requirements by following the instructions on our Course Petitions page. To learn about individual courses below, search through the BU Bulletin.

Biogeoscience

  • CAS BI/EE 530: Forest Ecology
  • CAS BI/GE 523: Marine Urban Ecology (BU Marine Program Course)
  • CAS EE 503 Micrometeorology
  • CAS EE 504 Physical Climatology
  • CAS EE 511 Introduction to the Atmospheric Boundary Layer
  • CAS EE 512: Urban Climate
  • CAS EE 514: Dynamic Land Surface Hydrology
  • CAS EE 533: Quantitative Geomorphology
  • CAS EE 543: Estuaries and Nearshore Systems
  • CAS ES 540: Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Change
  • GRS BI 648 Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
  • GRS EE 623: Marine Biochemistry
  • GRS BI/EE 643 Terrestrial Biogeochemistry
  • GRS EE 656 Terrestrial Ecosystems and the Carbon Cycle
  • GRS EE 683: Geodynamics II: Fluids and Fluid Transport

Environmental Health

  • SPH EH 720: Climate and Health
  • SPH EH 722: Climate Change and Health Equity
  • SPH EH 727: Incorporating Health to Design Healthy Climate Solutions
  • SPH EH 730: Methods in Environmental Health Sciences
  • SPH EH 745: Wastewater and Health/ Sustainable Sanitation
  • SPH EH 750: Water Quality and Public Health
  • SPH EH 757: Environmental Epidemiology
  • SPH EH 804: Field Methods in Exposure Science
  • SPH EH 866: Risk Assessment Methods

If an Environmental Health course that you would like to take is full and you’d like to be added to the course waitlist, please visit BUSPH Registrar’s Office Forms to download, complete, and submit the waitlist form for the term you would like to be enrolled in the course to sphregr@bu.edu. See Waitlist FAQs or email urban@bu.edu for additional information.

Statistics

  • CAS GE 508: Data Science for Conservation Decisions
  • CAS GE 509: Applied Environmental Statistics
  • CAS GE 516: Multivariate Analysis for Geographers
  • CAS GE 529: Modeling and Monitoring Terrestrial Ecosystem Processes
  • CAS EE 545 (previously GRS GE 420/620): Methods of Environmental Policy Analysis
  • CAS GE 585: Ecological Forecasting and Informatics
  • GRS GE 640: Digital Image Processing – Remote Sensing
  • GRS GE 712: Regional Energy Modeling
  • SPH BS 723: Introduction to Statistical Computing
  • SPH BS 730: Introduction to R: Software for Statistical Computing
  • SPH BS 805: Intermediate Statistical Computing & Applied Regression Analysis
  • SPH BS 852: Statistical Methods in Epidemiology
  • SPH BS 857: Analysis of Correlated Data
  • SPH BS 820: Logistic Regression and Survival Analysis
  • SPH BS 853: Generalized Linear Models with Applications
  • SPH EH 851: Advanced Geographic Information Systems for Climate Research and Public Health
  • Any graduate-level course from the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, especially:
    • GRS MA 681: Accelerated Introduction to Statistics for Quantitative Research
    • GRS MA 703: Statistical Analysis of Network Data
    • CAS MA 585: Time series
    • CAS MA 578: Bayesian Statistics
    • GRS MA 751 Statistical Learning

Computing & Data Science:

  • CDS DS 537 Data Science for Conservation Decisions
  • CDS DS 541 Agent-Based Modeling of People, Health, and the Environment
  • CDS DS 563 Algorithmic Techniques for Taming Big Data
  • CDS DS 574 Algorithmic Mechanism Design

The following additional courses have been recommended by URBAN faculty and may be of particular interest to URBAN Trainees:

  • CAS BI 510: Institutional Racism in Health and Science
  • CAS EE 528: US Environmental Policy
  • CAS EE 538: Research for Environmental Agencies and Organizations
  • GRS GE 660: Food, Energy and Water Resources: Economics and Policy
  • SPH PH 801: Community Engaged Research: Theory, Methods, and Applications
  • SPH EH 881: Intro GIS for Public Health