Syllabus Bank

The Climate Solutions Lab syllabus bank fosters and improves university-level courses on climate change in the social sciences. At many universities, such courses are scarce – despite student demand on the world’s most important global problem. For potential instructors, developing a new syllabus from scratch can be a barrier to teaching the course. So, we offer some existing syllabi, for free, to anyone in the world. Different courses have different features, like film documentaries or class simulations.

We are extremely grateful to the instructors who have volunteered their syllabi for this purpose. More syllabi are welcome.

To submit a syllabus, please use this form.

Featured Syllabus

Origins of the Syllabus Bank

The Climate Syllabus Bank was designed to help universities meet the huge student demand for courses on climate change. Students are often thirsty for knowledge about the politics, economics, law, geography, sociology, and public policy of climate change — but instructors are not always well-prepared to offer those courses.

Professor Michael Ross (UCLA) had the original idea for the Syllabus Bank. He and Jeff Colgan (CSL Director) refined the idea at a meeting convened by Professor Robert Keohane, as part of the climate research group he supported through his Balzan Prize funds. The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University, under Professor Margaret Levi’s leadership, hosted that meeting in February 2020. John Mazza and the Watson Institute staff then took the lead in implementing the website, following Professor Colgan’s design.

Since then, many instructors from around the world have generously donated their syllabi. We are very grateful for their contributions, and their willingness to participate in the free distribution of knowledge, in the hopes of meeting the challenge of climate change.