Who We Are
The Environmental Studies Program (ESP) at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) began in 2011 as a way to bring the emerging field of Environmental Humanities to students in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV). The program is an interdisciplinary collaboration in exploring all aspects of the global ecological crisis and the natural sciences through the lens of the humanities and social sciences. Our goals are to increase ecological literacy and to raise awareness that humans are but one part of our interconnected and interdependent ecological system. We achieve these goals using problem-posing and experiential-learning pedagogies to expose our students to the politics and science of our local, regional, and international ecosystem.
We offer an interdisciplinary minor that bridges the natural sciences with the social sciences and the humanities. The minor includes courses that integrate skills and knowledge applicable to the pursuit of solutions to environmental challenges faced globally, nationally, regionally, and locally. Our students come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and have majors across almost every college within the university. The Environmental Awareness Club is an active student group that engages communities on and off campus. Faculty members who teach in the program also span multiple colleges and departments on campus, including but not limited to History, Philosophy, Social Work, Writing and Language Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, and Environmental Science. Our faculty have strong academic knowledge in environmental history, activism and community engagement, politics, and political economy.
The ESP holds an annual fall symposium, Eco Rio, that features presentations on the environment from faculty, students, staff, and local community members.