Courses:
| Course Number | Course Title | Course Description | Reflection |
| BIOL 2160 | Introductory Microbiology | Understanding the microbial world is a very important part of understanding how our environment works. In this course you learn about different metabolism of bacteria and the impacts they have on ecosystem health. In addition you also learn how bacteria can both harm or help our health by our interactions with in different and changing environments. | This course is what inspired me to focus on environmental research. I found it fascinating how such tinny living things can have a huge impact on the environment and everything in it. From this course it provided be with the background knowledge that I have continued to develop throughout my time at TRU. |
| BIOL 2170 | Introduction to Ecology | This course teaches you standard macro ecology analysis. Topics like trophic levels, diversity and abundance was tough as well as how changing environments can impact this | In this course I gathered a greater appreciation for the animals living in each environment. I learned how humans have impacted species habit and how that has result sin population decline. Understanding how important it is for animals to have a thriving ecosystem and how humans have disrupted it made me feel a new sense of compassion for the environment and made me aware of things that need to change to project it. |
| BIOL 3210 | Microbial Ecology | Describes the relationships bacteria and other microorganism share with their environment. It applies traditional macro ecology analysis on animals and habitats they live in but is instead applied to the microscopic world. | In this course I began to realize that bacteria can be a solution for many environmental issues like pollution and climate change. Before I knew that bacteria where important for the heath of an ecosystem but from this course I learned that bacteria can also be a tool to help solve environmental issues. This new way of thinking has stuck with me and has become a new focus for my research in microbiology as well as potential Master’s programs. |
| CHEM 3010 | Aqueous Environmental Chemistry | Shows how important chemistry is to the environment and how small changes can wither cause harm or is the very reason we have such unique aqueous environments. This course studies the chemistry of water and toxicological affects that chemical contaminants in our waters can have on ecosystems. | This curse gave me a glimpse of real world problems in environmental chemistry. From this course I learned the importance of recognizing multiple factors an ecosystem can have and how they must be teated separately even though they are connected. This coursed helped me narrow down my whole systems thinking from previous course and understand that each micro-environments has unique characteristics and different way to treat it if say it was polluted. |
| SOCI 2620 | Sociology of the Environment | In this course we learn to understand how people and societies view issues like climate change as well as other societal pressures that influence people’s decisions on environmental issues. | This course was quite different than the other courses I have taken in my degree. When I think about the environment I usually think about the plants, animals and microbes that live there and how they are affected. However, in this course I learned about how people are connected to the environment both in a positive and negative way. I have always know that humans have been some of the primary cause for harm to the environment but I never knew why. In this course we studied peoples motives and societies pressure to advance technology which ultimately caused harm to the environment. |
| GEOG 3100 | Environment, Resources and Sustainability | An overview of human caused environmental issues are discussed, including specific case studies on the West Coast of Canada. This course help you to understand the complex layers that are involved with environmental sustainability. | In this course I leaned more about specific environmental issues in Canada. Before this course I though Canada and especially BC was very sustainable however, I leaned that governments and private companies have very different agendas that do not alight with sustainable practices. From this course I leaned that industry and government involvement in suitability projects must be addressed. This inspired me to focus my environmental research on fighting against industries like oil and gas or finding ways to collaborate with them to change their methods to be more sustainable. |