Yale University Courses

Faculty: Paul Anastas
Please check Canvas for details

This course focuses on a green engineering design framework, the Twelve Principles of Green Engineering, highlighting the key approaches to advancing sustainability through engineering design. The class begins with discussions on sustainability, metrics, general design processes, and challenges to sustainability. The current approach to design, manufacturing, and disposal is discussed in the context of examples and case studies from various sectors. This provides a basis for what and how to consider when designing products, processes, and systems to contribute to furthering sustainability. The fundamental engineering design topics to be addressed include toxicity and benign alternatives, pollution prevention and source reduction, separations and disassembly, material and energy efficiencies and flows, systems analysis, biomimicry, and life cycle design, management, and analysis.

Faculty: Julie Zimmerman, Desiree Plata
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An introduction to environmental engineering with an emphasis on the fundamental chemistry, physics, and biology necessary to protect and restore environmental systems and advance the goal of sustainability. This course will provide a broad survey of the discipline from which to understand, evaluate, and restore environmental systems and to design sustainable solutions to minimize environmental impact.

Faculty: Shimon C. Anisfeld*, Bradford S. Gentry, Peter A. Raymond, Julie Zimmerman
Subject of Instruction: Water Resources.
Not Currently Offered

While there are many different approaches to understanding and managing environmental problems, most involve several major steps: (1) describing/understanding the nature of the problem and its causes; (2) using technical, policy, social, and other management tools/processes to help address it; while (3) recognizing/making the value judgments embedded in each (what problems/data are “important”? what solutions are “best”?). The purpose of this introductory course is to illustrate how an M.E.M. student might integrate scientific understanding with management choices as part of an effort to address any particular environmental issue. Ideally, it should help students choose areas of specialization, as well as improve their ability to engage in integrative problem solving—both in their final term and after they graduate. The class is focused on water issues, but the integrative structure of the class could be used on other problems as well. The class is built around a case-study approach, in which the faculty bring their different perspectives to bear on understanding and addressing the issues raised in a diverse set of cases, including: the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico; the New York City drinking water supply; Australia’s response to water scarcity; the Cochabamba “water wars”; and  one other case for the final. Preference given to first-year M.E.M. students. Three hours lecture, one hour discussion each week.

F&ES 610 is a prerequisite for:

F&ES 712: Water Resource Management

Preference given to first year MEM students.

Faculty: Marian Chertow, Thomas E. Graedel*, Julie Zimmerman
Subject of Instruction: Industrial Ecology
Not Currently Offered

OCI Listing

The course examines various industries from engineering, environmental, financial perspectives, and emphasizes increasingly detailed analyses of corporate environmental performance. Methods are drawn from operations management, industrial ecology, and accounting and finance to investigate industrial processes, the potential to pollute, and the environmental and business implications of various sustainability approaches. Life cycle assessment and environmental cost accounting are typical tools that are taught; the class also involves several field trips to companies.

Subject of Instruction: Industrial Ecology
Not Currently Offered

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an environmental modeling method that has become increasingly popular within business and academia for evaluating the environmental impacts of products or systems. LCA considers impacts along the entire life cycle, from production to consumption to disposal, and generally provides quantitative information for a range of different environmental issues. In this practicum course, students work on real projects with industry partners in order to achieve skills and training as analysts in this field. The course begins with a review of the intellectual foundation of LCA, the computational structure of the method, and the international standards that govern its use. Students then receive several hands-on training modules for commercial LCA software packages, and work examples for model products and systems. This initial training prepares students to carry out their independent group projects over the remainder of the course. Special topics in LCA research and implementation are also covered later in the course, including carbon and water footprinting and a focus this year on the built environment. Regular project updates occur in class and individually with the instructor, and results are presented to industry partners at the end of the course in a professional consulting context. Prerequisite: F&ES 886a

Faculty: Paul Anastas
Not Currently Offered

The goal for this course is to provide the student with an introduction to the knowledge and skills required to design, synthesize and make materials in an environmentally benign way. The course will describe the science behind environmental problems and will look at real world green chemistry products and processes and manufacturing techniques with emphasis on energy, solvents, catalysis, and bio-based materials. The class will also examine industrial case-studies where green chemistry has been successfully implemented. In addition to the environmental considerations we will also discuss the economic implications of these “real-world” cases. By the end of the semester, the students will be familiar with the global, toxicological, and physical hazards that underlie the problems facing industry and society but more importantly understand how to implement the principles of green chemistry to create solutions to these problems.