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This course offers an introduction to all things birds! Classroom lectures during weeks 1 & 2 will discuss bird evolution, basic anatomy & physiology, behavior, and ecology. Field sessions at Como Park and Crosby Farm Regional Park during weeks 3 & 4 from 9:30 -11:30 am will focus on bird identification. Terrain: flat, wheelchair accessible paths. Binoculars provided for those who need them. 

Recommended reading: Birds of Minnesota Field Guide by Stan Tekiela.

This course will explain the basic physics, history, and economics of nuclear weapons, enabling informed discussion about the factors that influence the likelihood and impact of nuclear war. Participants will learn how the arms limitation treaties of the 1990s significantly reduced the potential destructiveness of nuclear conflict and consider how similar agreements could mitigate risks in the future.

Mass atrocities devastate societies with lost lives and ecocide, wanton environmental destruction. We look at three ecological crises: the Holocaust and wars in Syria and Ukraine. The "environmental Holocaust" includes deforestation, resource pillaging, and pollution of air, water, and soil. Syria's long-civil war has irrevocably damaged the country's natural world. Ukraine’s ecocide includes Russia’s bombing of the Kakhovka dam. Floodwaters wiped out villages and farms, spreading toxins in one of Europe’s biggest ecological disasters in decades. The course concludes with global and local punishment and sanctions for ecocide.

Cat Bohannon's book, EVE: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, is the inspiration for this cross-category course. We'll think about biological evolution for the first three weeks, then turn to women's contributions to social and cultural evolution.