- Majors should recognize the major environmental challenges we face--climate change, loss of biodiversity, and depletion/degradation of natural resources.
- Majors are also expected to recognize that understanding these challenges requires knowledge of the underlying physical and biological processes involved as well as the complex ways these processes interact with cultural, political, and economic forces.
- Majors are expected to possess the basic statistical techniques that are required to evaluate research in both the natural and the social sciences.
- Majors are expected to have acquired a degree of literacy in the relevant discipline (natural and social sciences and humanities) that enable them to critically evaluate public debates about environmental policy and policy options.