UC San Diego has introduced a new graduation requirement for incoming first-year students in the class of 2028. The students will need to take one of 40 courses available to satisfy the requirement of understanding and addressing climate change. The courses are available in various majors, including environmental studies, economics, history, and visual arts.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography has the most offerings, with 11 courses available. Chancellor Pradeep Khosla said, “Whether undergraduates are majoring in STEM, the humanities, arts, social sciences, or any other field, this requirement will equip them with a strong understanding of climate change and how they can contribute to meaningful solutions.”
The requirement is named after Jane Teranes, a professor at the Scripps Institution who died in 2022. During her two decades at UCSD, she created several programs designed to educate students in the geosciences.
In 2011, the school implemented an initiative that provided a framework for the new climate-change course mandate. Muir College Provost Wayne Yang said, “The climate requirement incentivizes and encourages faculty to integrate climate change education into their upper-division courses, and thus deepens the curriculum by focusing on what students can actually do about climate change from their disciplines.”
School officials said efforts were made to align the climate-change requirement so as not to add to a student’s workload. Transfer students will be encouraged, but not required, to take one of the classes.
UC San Diego’s new climate curriculum
Mutale Malama, a freshman at UC San Diego, chose to take “The Oceans” to fulfill the requirement. She said, “I think if you care about yourself and others, then you should care about the science concerning this earth and where we are right now.”
Yang noted that some of the strongest advocates for the requirement weren’t climate scientists. “They were people from the arts and humanities, literature, and social science,” he said. They really understand that climate change is not simply a scientific problem. It’s a scientific fact, but it is actually a social problem. It’s a political problem. It’s a cultural problem.”
The faculty decided against requiring all students to take the same class. “We don’t want a whole class to say, ‘Things are bad, see you later. I think that’s what we’ve done to this generation, right?’
“We’ve left this generation in kind of a bad place,” Yang said. “Instead, the faculty realized that what we want is to give this generation, the next generation, all the tools to combat climate change.”
UC San Diego is the first campus in the University of California system and the first major public university to launch a climate change requirement. Yang said, “I don’t know how we’re going to solve climate change, but I have no doubt that our students are going to be part of it.”
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