Interested in water?
Below is a list of courses taught by The Water Center at Penn’s Executive Director, Howard Neukrug.
To browse a curated collection of environment-related courses available to undergraduate and graduate students at Penn, visit Penn's Environmental Innovations Initiative's Course Inventory here.
The Role of Water in Urban Sustainability and Resiliency
Semester: Fall
School: Art & Sciences
Department: EES
Course Code: ENVS 1650
Instructor: Howard Neukrug
This course will provide an overview of the cross-disciplinary fields of civil engineering, environmental sciences, urban hydrology, landscape architecture, green building, public outreach and politics. Students will be expected to conduct field investigations, review scientific data and create indicator reports, working with stakeholders and presenting the results at an annual symposium. There is no metaphor like water itself to describe the cumulative effects of our practices, with every upstream action having an impact downstream. In our urban environment, too often we find degraded streams filled with trash, silt, weeds and dilapidated structures. The water may look clean, but is it? We blame others, but the condition of the creeks is directly related to how we manage our water resources and our land. In cities, these resources are often our homes, our streets and our communities. This course will define the current issues of the urban ecosystem and how we move toward managing this system in a sustainable manner. We will gain an understanding of the dynamic, reciprocal relationship between practices in a watershed and its waterfront. Topics discussed include drinking water quality and protection, green infrastructure, urban impacts of climate change, watershed monitoring, public education, creating strategies and more.
The U.S. Water Industry in the 21st Century
Semester: Spring
School: Art & Sciences
Department: EES
Course Code: ENVS 629-660
Instructor: Howard Neukrug
This course will explore all 4 sectors of the water business in the United States: The Drinking Water Industry, The Stormwater Utility, Water Resources (rivers, streams, reservoirs) Management and the Water Pollution Control Industry. The course will have 2 primary foci: 1. The influences on the industry from new technologies and infrastructure, acceptable levels of risk, public and private sector competition, climate change, the bottled water industry, resource recovery, rates and affordability and other influences will be investigated. 2. The management of a 21st century utility will be explored, including topics of organization and leadership, the role of environmentalism, infrastructure financing, water / wastewater treatment facility operations, public affairs and media, and designing a capital improvement program are examples of topic areas.