The CHE certificate, administered by the Nelson Institute's Center for Culture, History, and Environment, captures the spirit of interdisciplinarity at the heart of CHE and the collaborations that have been forged across the Nelson Institute, the College of Letters & Science, and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. Departments, programs, and schools represented by CHE faculty and graduate students include American Indian Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Botany, Community and Environmental Sociology, English, Forest and Wildlife Ecology, Gender and Women's Studies, Geography, History, History of Science, Journalism and Mass Communication, Law, Landscape Architecture, Limnology, and Zoology.

The environmental challenges we face today arise as much from human actions as from natural processes. Only at our peril do we forget that nature, in all its myriad forms, is inextricably bound up with every aspect of human culture, economy, and politics. In attending to past environmental and cultural change, and in synthesizing diverse research methods and approaches drawn from across the full spectrum of humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences, the certificate in culture, history, and environment contributes in important ways to the understanding of past, present, and future environmental issues through interdisciplinary education and research.

Through the CHE Environmental History Colloquia, the annual Place-Based Workshops, and the Graduate Symposium, among other activities, CHE has created a lively, engaged community of faculty, graduate students, and others from a wide array of academic disciplines to investigate environmental and cultural change in the full sweep of human history. The CHE certificate considers applications from students in any graduate degree program at UW–Madison. By entering CHE early in their graduate studies and planning carefully, students often can select courses that satisfy both their degree program and CHE requirements.

CHE is not available as a stand-alone graduate degree. Master's and doctoral students who complete the requirements receive a certificate in CHE to supplement their graduate degree, or doctoral students can instead complete the program as an external minor. Doctoral students cannot claim CHE as both a certificate and an external minor; they must choose one or the other.

Admissions

Applications

To apply:

1. Find a Culture, History and Environment faculty associate who is willing to serve as your advisor.
2. Complete the form available here and submit with an unofficial transcript.
3. Apply through the UW-Madison Graduate Student Portal.

All Graduate School students must utilize the Graduate Student Portal in MyUW to add, change, or discontinue any graduate/professional certificate. To apply to this certificate, log in to MyUW, click on Graduate Student Portal, and then click on Add/Change Programs. Select the information for the certificate for which you are applying. Professional students in the careers of Law, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Veterinary cannot add the certificate in the Graduate Student Portal, and should contact the program for more information.

The certificate coordinator will review your application for admittance and reach out to you if they have any further questions.

Admissions process

Culture, History and Environment Curriculum Committee reviews applications on a rolling schedule.

Requirements

Students must complete 12 credits, including ENVIR ST 922 Historical and Cultural Methods in Environmental Research. Courses should represent a thematically coherent selection related to past environmental and cultural change and expose students to research approaches outside of their home discipline. An advisor approved plan of study must be reviewed and approved by the Culture, History and Environmental curriculum subcommittee.

The plan of study must be relevant to the student’s chosen area of focus. The area of focus should be related to human dimensions of an environmental issue, distinct from the focus of their major program. Examples of areas of focus include (but are certainly not limited to):

• posthumanism and the human-wildlife interface
• critical engagements with conservation science
• feminist political ecology and/or ecofeminisms
• history of indigenous landscapes and cultures in Central America
• environmental justice and Latinx, Black, and/or other minoritized communities in the US
• food insecurity and sovereignty
• the literature and/or art of polluted spaces

Sample Courses

Below is a sample of courses that have been used as area of focus courses, but students are not limited to these courses when developing their plan of study.

Learning Outcomes

1. Gain knowledge of human dimensions of the environment, by learning about the diverse interests, experiences and meanings that different people have associated with the natural world.
2. Become familiar with different methodologies associated with the environmental humanities.
3. Deploy diverse methods - including and especially historical and cultural methods - to approach, interpret, and explain environmental change across space and/or time.

People

CHE Leadership: https://che.nelson.wisc.edu/leadership/