ABSTRACT
In August 2009, a story appeared in the news magazine Newsweek that reported an explosion of interest in studying the environment on college campuses all over the United States. By 2016, the NCSE was reporting that the number of colleges and universities in the United States offering interdisciplinary degrees in environmental studies had grown to 872, an increase of nearly 34% since 2008. While the list of serious environmental challenges is growing, the complexity of these challenges seems to be growing as well. Some issues like climate change are dauntingly complex. Understanding environmental problems requires knowledge that has been produced by academic disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Interdisciplinary research holds great promise for fruitfully studying a wide variety of environmental issues.
