Other Energy Programs

Of our comparison schools and US World and New Report’s top 50 liberal arts colleges, only Union College had an undergraduate level Energy Studies program. Union’s program, a minor, contains two components. The first is combines courses in environmental studies like Environmental Anthropology, Environmental Politics and Law, and Environmental and Natural Resource Economics. I assume that these courses only contain energy-intensive components, and are not wholly focused on the topic. The second component, however, seems significantly more focused, and includes science-based courses. This includes courses like Thermodynamics, Energy Conversion, and Solar Energy Analysis and Design.

Outside of our comparison liberal arts colleges, in a brief search I could find no other liberal arts colleges that offer an interdisciplinary Energy Studies or Energy and Society program at the undergraduate level similar to the one we envision at Allegheny College (it is worth noting that this extended search was by no means exhaustive). For larger schools, however, it is common to have renewable energy specific programs, though their focus is very much in engineering. For instance Cornell University offers one such program, as does MIT. Many universities, such as The University of California at Berkeley and Boston University, do offer graduate-level programs involving Energy Studies, but these rarely seem to translate into undergraduate offerings.