A completely-online graduate-level course on the science of climate change is being offered through The Ohio State University this summer. Scholarships paying 80% of the course costs are available.

Earth Sciences 580Y is a 3 quarter credit (not semester) grad level course that will run from June 15-July 24, 2009. The course is offered under a contract between The Ohio State University’s School of Earth Sciences, in the College of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, and the OSU Office of Continuing Education. As a result, the fees are the same for everyone; there are no differences in costs for nonresidents. Because this course is arranged under contract with the OSU Office of Continuing Education, current Ohio State students are not eligible to participate.

A DVD entitled, “Understanding Global Climate Change”, produced by teachers in collaboration with the National Science Foundation’s Science & Technology Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS), will serve as the primary basis for content. The disc will be mailed to participants who are selected to take this course. Additional online readings will be selected based on news releases and other timely events. This course is an online grad-level course only, requiring full participation in asynchronous dialogue and completing a lesson or communication strategy about the content. There is no requirement to be online at any given time. Note: No face-to-face session will be required, reducing our carbon footprint for this course.

Also, this summer only, ten applicants will receive a partial scholarship to participate in the course. The scholarship recipients will pay only $115 for the 3-credit course. Their participation will help us refine the content and delivery, if necessary. Other participants will pay the full cost of the course: $575. Note: Course costs may be adjusted in future course offerings.

Please share this information with your colleagues and friends everywhere. We hope to draw a diverse participant pool from around the U.S.A. and the world. We are capping the course at 20 participants this summer, but plan to offer multiple sections of the course throughout the 2009-2010 academic year.

Three important notes:

1)  We plan to run the course every quarter in 2009-2010, but this is the only quarter for which we will have scholarship support.

2)  It is important for graduate students at other institutions to discuss the course content with their advisers, to learn in advance whether or not the credit for the course can be applied at their institution.

3)  We hope the course will be valued by librarians, park naturalists, soldiers, economists, lawyers, youth groups, homeschoolers, environmental groups, and other citizens who want to speak knowledgeably about the scientific aspects of climate change.

Please go to the BPRC website to download the course description and the course app (with a checkbox for the scholarship app): http://bprc.osu.edu/.

-Submitted by Carol Landis, Ph.D
Education and Outreach Specialist
Byrd Polar Research Center
The Ohio State University