The Environmental Management and Policy program (EMP) provides students with rigorous, problem-oriented training in the theories and practical skills they will need to contribute meaningfully to ongoing efforts to craft a sustainable, just world. Through interdisciplinary course work and unique field-work, internship, and service-learning opportunities in the Yellowstone River watershed (and beyond) EMP students learn to think, speak, and write critically and pragmatically about the links between environmental science, human development, and decision-making. Rocky Mountain College's location along the Yellowstone River and close to the both the Beartooth Mountains and Yellowstone National Park provides EMP students with unique opportunities to explore first-hand the human-environment-dynamics and development patterns that drive resource management policies.

Program Student Learning Outcomes

Graduates with a degree in Environmental Management and Policy will:

• Apply fundamental theories from the disciplines of business, the natural science and social sciences, and the humanities to environmental issues;
• Demonstrate knowledge of political, legal, and economic processes associated with environmental management and policy;
• Demonstrate knowledge of the ethical implications of environmental management and policy decisions.

Major in Environmental Management & Policy

Core requirements:
EST101 Introduction to Environmental Studies
ESC105 Environmental Science: Sustainable Communities
ESC225 Energy and Society
ECO201 Principles of Macroeconomics
ECO202 Principles of Microeconomics
ECO354 Environmental Economics
BSA321 Principles of Management
ENG244 Literature and the Environment
PHR304 Environmental Ethics
POL313 Environmental Politics

Choose three of the following:
BSA331 Business Law
BSA412 Business Ethics

BSA318 Entrepreneurship
OR
BSA425 Small Business Operations

ECO401 International Trade
ESC209 Field Survey Techniques in Zoology
ESC314 Range Ecology
ESC330 Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
ESC436 Yellowstone Winter Ecology
GEO320 The Geology of Natural Resources
HST365 American Environmental History
IDS205 Negotiations
POL301 International Relations

Or a relevant Special Topics course with permission of faculty.

BSA318 - Entrepreneurship

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
Students will learn the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs, how to seek and evaluate opportunities for new ventures, how to prepare a complete business plan, and how to plan strategies and gather resources to create business opportunities.

BSA321 - Principles of Management

Semester: Fall and Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students examine the management functions and basic concepts and principles of management, including planning, organization, coordination, control, job design, and human resource management. Topics in human resource management include recruitment, selection, administration of personnel policies, and dismissals. This course is often required as a prerequisite for master’s level business programs.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing

BSA331 - Business Law

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
A course that explores the legal principles relating to business transactions: contracts, sales, commercial paper, intellectual property, and e-commerce. A study of the legal environment of business is emphasized. This course is often required as a prerequisite for master's level business programs.

BSA412 - Business Ethics

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
A study of the ethical problems that evolve in the modern business world, including a brief history of ethics and the practical ethical problems associated with running a business. Knowledge of ethical concepts as they apply to business management is explored through case studies and student class presentations. Emphasis is on the role of management as it affects stockholders, employees, customers, and competitors. Issues such as product safety, plant closures, advertising, doing business in other countries, and the overall role of business and society are discussed.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing

BSA425 - Small Business Operations

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course focuses on how owners and managers grow companies in a professional manner while maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit. Students draw from varied disciplines to create and understand strategies for building and growing a successful venture.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing

ECO201 - Principles of Macroeconomics

Semester: Fall and Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course is the study of aggregate economic problems, including an introduction to the economics of full employment, economic growth, and price stability.

ECO202 - Principles of Microeconomics

Semester: Fall and Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students study individual economic problems. This course offers an introduction to production and exchange, pricing policies, and resource allocation under alternative competitive situations.

ECO354 - Environmental Economics

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students examine the application of microeconomics to problems of the environment. This course is offered both for the major and for those interested in environmental problems.
Prerequisite: ECO 202

ECO401 - International Trade

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
The structure of world trade, the effect of international trade upon national income, exchange rates, problems of foreign aid and investment, and industrialization of underdeveloped countries.
Prerequisites: ECO 201 and ECO 202

ENG244 - Literature and the Environment

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course is a comparative study of the environmental imagination as expressed in literature. By reading and discussing a wide range of literary texts, students investigate timeless and more urgent questions, such as “What is nature?”; “What is our responsibility to the environment?”; “How do various cultures express their relation to the natural world?”.

ESC105 - Environmental Science: Sustainable Communities

Semester: Fall and Spring
Semester hours: 4
This course is a comparative study of the environmental imagination as expressed in literature. By reading and discussing a wide range of literary texts, students investigate timeless and more urgent questions, such as “What is nature?”; “What is our responsibility to the environment?”; “How do various cultures express their relation to the natural world?”.

ESC209 - Field Survey Techniques in Zoology

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 4
This course is a comparative study of the environmental imagination as expressed in literature. By reading and discussing a wide range of literary texts, students investigate timeless and more urgent questions, such as “What is nature?”; “What is our responsibility to the environment?”; “How do various cultures express their relation to the natural world?”
Prerequisite: ESC 105 and/or BIO 112

ESC225 - Energy and Society

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students are introduced to the concepts of energy, power and the physical laws that control their transformations. This understanding is applied to analyze human use of energy. Issues considered include the various sources of energy and their limits, the technologies of energy conversion, the end uses of energy, and the environmental consequences of energy use.

ESC314 - Range Ecology

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 4
Range ecology is the study of mixed grass prairies of the West and an introduction to ecological concepts applicable to that area. Topics include historical and current land use, ecosystem responses to change, methods for maintaining natural prairie habitats, the use of prairies as rangelands, and determinations of ecological conditions and trends on rangelands. The laboratory focuses on identification of common prairie plant species and their importance for both wildlife and domestic animals. Three hours of lecture and one two-hour laboratory session per week.
Prerequisites: BIO 112, CHM 101, and CHM 102

ESC330 - Wildlife Management and Conservation

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 4
A multidisciplinary approach to conservation and management issues encompassing genetics to ethics. Topics include population genetics, evolutionary mechanisms, biodiversity, reserve design, and re-introduction strategies. Written reports and oral presentations required. Additional fee required.
Prerequisites: BIO 112 and ESC 105

ESC436 - Yellowstone Winter Ecology

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 4
This course focuses on the ecology of Yellowstone National Park, particularly emphasizing the complex interactions of large mammals with the forest and range plant communities. Students explore the methods used by the National Park Service to establish natural resource policies and examine the Park’s scientific research priorities. Two extended weekend laboratories provide research opportunities that include topics in winter ecology and aspects of the role of large mammals in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Additional fee required.
Prerequisites: ENG 119, ENG 120, and BIO 112

EST101 - Introduction to Environmental Studies

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course explores the complexity of environmental issues as approached from the perspectives of the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Since environmental issues are inherently complex, attention is focused on how human beings perceive, understand, and respond to environmental change. Emphasis is placed on developing students’ abilities to investigate matters critically and to respond in original, thoughtful, and imaginative ways.

GEO320 - The Geology of Natural Resources

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 4
This course involves the study of geologic processes that produce mineral, coal, crude oil and natural gas (e.g. coalbed methane) deposits and environmental issues associated with their extraction and use. Emphasis is placed on regional deposits with field trips to appropriate sites. Two hours of lecture per week and field trips.
Prerequisite: GEO 101/104 or GEO 105

HST365 - American Environmental History

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 3
This course examines the interrelationship of human society and nature in American history. Topics will include ecology as it relates to European conquest of the Americas, Native American peoples, public lands policies, American national character, technological society, conservation, and the modern environmental movement.

IDS205 - Negotiations

Semester: Fall
Semester hours: 2
Negotiation constitutes the primary form of dispute resolution. Negotiation is a comprehensible social process, not a mystical process in a black box; it can be analyzed, understood, and modeled. Negotiation is a learnable and teachable skill. Negotiator’s are made not born, and skills can be improved and relearned throughout life. The goal of this course is to empower the student, to become a comfortable negotiator - to appreciate the professional and personal enjoyment to be derived from negotiating.

PHR304 - Environmental Ethics

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
This course will address issues such as whether natural beings and the natural world have rights or whether only humans have rights. Students will determine what is ethically appropriate for humans in their relationship with the environment as well as what environmental ethics must take account of to be consequential in the world today.

POL301 - International Relations

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Students examine an analysis of the way nations interact with one another and how the necessities of power and the desire to regulate the use of power in the international arena have influenced twentieth-century world politics.
Prerequisite: A lower-division history or political science course

POL313 - Environmental Politics

Semester: Spring
Semester hours: 3
Political problems associated with the human impact on the natural environment: pollution, natural resources, public lands, land use, energy, cultural/social justice, and population.