EESC1720 · Complex Problems and Enduring Questions
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences
This is a Complex Problem course and is open to FRESHMEN only. You must take both EESC1720 and ENGL1733. The realities of a changing climate, including intensified extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and strengthening heat waves and droughts, are already being felt by frontline communities around the world. This course focuses both on hearing stories about climate change as told by climate writers, scientists, and members of frontline communities, and telling these stories ourselves. We will examine storytelling as it works across mediums and genres from literature to scientific data visualizations, and consider what it means to write an essay, produce a graph, create a podcast, or make a film. Students in the course will read, watch, and analyze examples of climate storytelling, broadly defined, and produce their own personal essays, infographics, podcasts, and/or films. Some questions we will foreground throughout the semester are: How do we communicate the science and the human impacts of the climate crisis? Whose ways of knowing and lived experiences do we privilege? How can the stories we tell move society towards just climate solutions?
Course experience
Averages use the original five-point historical evaluation scale.
Organization
4.1 / 5
How well the course was organized
Challenge
4.2 / 5
How intellectually challenging students found it
Attendance
3.7 / 5
How necessary attendance was
Assignments
3.9 / 5
How helpful assignments were
Weekly effort
~4
hours per week
Estimated from the original workload response buckets. Individual sections may differ.
Instructor options
Ratings below reflect only recovered evaluations connected to this course.
Student perspective
Recovered and new anonymous comments are shown as written and may reflect different course formats.
Dec 31, 2025 · Historical comment
Very nice, understanding, and caring. Class isn't too hard, and you don't really need to do the readings. Attend review sessions before the quizzes (which are online and open-note), and you'll be well-prepared. The lab section for this class is basically a free grade booster.
Across time
Section-level results available in the recovered archive.
Fall 2023
11 sectionsFall 2021
15 sections