2025-2026

Environmental Anthropology, Minor

Department of Anthropology

College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Environmental Anthropology Minor trains students to understand and analyze human-environment relations in the past and present, and prepares future leaders who anticipate and respond to unanticipated future events and build resilient societies. The courses and lab opportunities in this program provide students with insights into the cultural and political dimensions of human-environmental relations with emphasis on the real-world applications of Environmental Anthropology for environmental policy and management. In consultation with a faculty mentor, students can take electives from across the university to acquire further training in a diversity of environmental areas.

Students will build the foundations to be competitive in a wide range of careers in larger environmental and sustainability fields. This minor has strong complementarity with other degrees in both the social and natural sciences, including Applied Indigenous Studies, Environmental Sciences, Environment and Sustainability Studies, Forestry, Geography and Planning, and Parks and Recreation Management.

This plan is available for students as of Fall 2026

  • A minor is earned in conjunction with a bachelor's degree.

    To receive a minor (18 - 24 units) at Northern Arizona University, you must complete a planned group of courses from one or more subject matter areas with a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.0. At least 12 units of the minor must be unique to that minor and not applied to any other minor.

In addition to University Requirements:

  • Complete individual plan requirements.

Students may be able to use some courses to meet more than one requirement. Contact your advisor for details.

No more than fifty percent of the units used to satisfy minor requirements may be used to satisfy major requirements.

Minimum Units for Completion 18
Major GPA C

Purpose Statement

Environmental Anthropology is a concentration within Anthropology that trains students to understand and analyze human-environment relations in the past and present. This includes preparing leaders to anticipate and respond to unprecedented environmental events like climate change and extreme weather events.

The Environmental Anthropology Minor provides students with knowledge about how human-environmental relations develop over time and across cultures. This includes attention to how human social organization responds to environmental contexts, and how dynamics of power and social hierarchy impact how people access, engage with, and govern environmental resources in the past and the present. Students will be trained in methods for understanding human-environmental relations, including critical analysis of land use, qualitative methods for assessing human relations with landscapes or species diversity, and textual analysis of environmental policies. Through interdisciplinary learning, methods-focused courses, and hands-on experiences across both the core and elective courses, the Environmental Anthropology Minor will prepare students for careers in a range of environmental and sustainability fields, like public lands management, natural resource management, environmental policy and law, eco-tourism, and conservation. These careers are available in federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as the non-profit sector, and increasingly in the private sector, and are important employment areas in Northern Arizona and the Colorado Plateau.

Environmental Anthropology positions are increasingly being advertised in higher education, by federal, state, and international agencies, non-profit organizations, tribal entities, museums, cultural resource management firms, among other sectors.

Students with the skills developed in the Environmental Anthropology Minor would be competitive for a wide range of jobs in larger environmental and sustainability fields, including Cultural and Natural Resource Management, Environmental Law and Policy, Eco-Tourism, Conservation, Environmental Planning, Water and Land Management, and Community Development. The public, private, and non-profit sectors regularly hire positions for which environmental anthropologists would be competitive.

Student Learning Outcomes

  • Define, summarize, and analyze Environmental Anthropology's core concepts, theories, methods, challenges, and major debates.
    Describe how Environmental Anthropology contributes to a greater understanding of the range of past and present human-environmental interactions.
  • Identify their cultural assumptions and evaluate how these assumptions affect their beliefs, behaviors, and education as related to the environment.
  • Identify past and present ethical issues in Environmental Anthropology, summarize the ethical guidelines provided by the major professional Anthropological organizations, and apply these guidelines in their education and research.
  • Examine the complexities of contemporary local, regional, and global environmental issues and evaluate how perspectives and methods from Environmental Anthropology develop solutions to these challenges.

Minor Requirements

  • Students enrolled in this minor may not enroll in or pursue the following due to the number of overlapping units:

Additional Information

  • Some courses may have prerequisites. For prerequisite information, click on the course or see your advisor.