CHE Program Chair: William Cronon
Nelson Institute Graduate Advisor: Jim Miller, 608-263-4373
To apply to CHE certificate click on the link above or go to the How to Apply page.
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 (CHE) contributes in important ways to the understanding of the past, present, and future environmental issues through interdisciplinary education and research.
In the spring of 2007, the Center for Culture, History, and Environment was officially established within the Nelson Institute. The disciplinary mix represented by the faculty and graduate student in CHE is a true cross-section of the collaborations that have been forged across the Nelson Institute, the College of Letters and Science, and the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. The list of departments, programs, and schools represented by the CHE faculty and graduate students includes American Indian Studies, Anthropology, Botany, English, Forest and Wildlife Ecology, Geography, History, History of Science, Journalism and Mass Communication, Law, Landscape Architecture, Limnology, Rural Sociology, and Women's Studies.
Through the CHE Environmental History Colloquium, the annual place-based workshops, and the Tales from Planet Earth film festival, 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.
CHE welcomes applications from students in any graduate degree program at UW-Madison. Master's degree students who complete the program receive CHE certificates in addition to their degrees. Doctoral students can complete either the certificate or the Ph.D. minor. CHE is not available as a stand-alone graduate degree.