University of Puget Sound - Environmental Policy & Decision Making Program

The Environmental Policy and Decision Making Program is an interdisciplinary minor program designed to help students integrate their major area of study with an understanding of how individual and collective decisions interact with the environment. The term "environment" is considered critically with recognition of the often blurry and even indistinguishable boundary between natural and human-built or managed environments. Environmental issues for study thus range from those related to non-human species and habitats to those concerning social and human health problems associated with population density and industrialization. While environmental issues reflect certain empirical realities about the physical world and its limits, they also engage contests among competing human values and visions for the future.