Faculty Initiatives
UTEP Faculty has been spreading awareness of the importance of sustainability... Pending
Offering Sustainability Oriented Classes
UTEP Faculty has been offering sustainability oriented classes... PendingCollege of Engineering
Undergraduate
Civil Engineering
- CE 1301 - Civil Engineering Fundamentals
Engineering Education and Leadership
- EL 1302 - Intro to Eng Design &
Leadshp
Mechanical Engineering
- MECH 4336. Principles of Engr Design
Graduate
Civil Engineering
- CE 5381 - Sustainable Construction
Electrical and Computer Engineering
- EE 5380 - Energy Sustainability
College of Science
Undergraduate
Environmental Science
- ESCI 1301 - Introduction to Environmental Science
- ESCI 1310 – Field methods in Environmental Science (formerly ESCI 2301)
- ESCI 1101 - Environmental Sci. Lab
- ESCI 1102 - Environmental Sci. Lab for non-majors
- ESCI 2204 - Research Exp in Envi Science 1
- ESCI 2105 - Research Exp in Envi Science 2
- ESCI 2201 – Environmental Policy and Law
- ESCI 4329 – Monitoring regional sustainability (starting Fall 2018)
- ESCI 4301 - Environmental Science Senior Project
- ESCI 3308 - Climate Science
Graduate
Environmental Science
- ESCI 5320 – Regional Water Sustainability (starting Fall 2018)
- ESCI 5310 – Interdisciplinary environmental problem solving (starting Fall 2018)
College of Health Sciences
Graduate
Occupational Therapy
- OT 5102 - Surface Anatomy
- OT 5136 - Preceptorship Studies
- OT 5301 - Anal & Adapt of Occupation I
- OT 5302 - Anal & Adapt of Occupation II
- OT 5310 -
Concpts & Fndts of Occup Pract - OT 5312 - Psychosocial Aspects of Occup.
- OT 5314 -
Concpts & Fndts of Cmnty Engmt - OT 5315 - Legal/Ethical Issues
Hlthcare - OT 5316 - Leadership in OT
- OT 5320 - Occupation
Perfor /Older Adults - OT 5324 - Occup Perf in Early Childhood
- OT 5325 - Occup Perform in Sch Age Child
- OT 5340 - Fieldwork II-Rotation I
- OT 5341 - Fieldwork II-Rotation I
- OT 5342 - Fieldwork II-Rotation II
College of Liberal Arts and College of Education
Undergraduate
Communication
- COMM 3323 - Environmental Leadership
- COMM 4360 - Environmental Communication
- COMM 4361 - Environmental Conflict
Sociology and Anthropology
- SOCI 3300/CHIC 4304 - Eco Sociology
- ANTH 3303 - Eco Anthropology
- ANTH 3380 - Cultural and Environmental Resource Management
Chicano Studies
- CHIC 4304 - Environmental Justice and Minority Communities in the U.S.
History
- HIST 3348 - Environmental History of Latin America
Philosophy
- PHIL 3307 - Environmental Ethics
- PHIL 4352 - Basic Philosophy Issues: Environmental Philosophy
Political Science
- POLS 4350 - Transboundary Environmental Issues
POLS 4304 - Envir. Just. & Min. Comm U.S.
Graduate
Science Education
- SIED 5312/6312 - Environmental Education
Communication
- COMM 5343 - Environment and Popular Music
- COMM 5346 - Environmental Communication
- COMM 5342 - Environmental Conflict
Sociology and Anthropology
- SOCI 5341 - Special Topics: Environmental Justice
Philosophy
- PHIL 5352 - Environmental Philosophy
- PHIL 5303 - Sustainability and Eng. Ethics
Environmental Science and Engineering
- ESE 6301 - Environmental Law & Policy
Faculty Expertise
Our UTEP faculty is committed to sustainability. Here are some examples of UTEP faculty engaged in sustainbility practicesAdeeba Raheem, PhD - Department of Civil Engineering
Dr. Raheem’s research interests include construction safety and sustainable construction, with emphasis on utilizing Building Information Modeling (BIM) and energy simulation tools and techniques.
She has worked on various research studies focused on improving the environmental performance of commercial and residential buildings. For the past few years, she has been working on optimizing the performance of various components of commercial building facades in hot and humid climates. Dr. Raheem has published her research work in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including Safety Science, Building Simulation and Building Appraisal.
Sam Brunk, PhD - Department of History
A key research area of Dr. Brunk is Environmental History in the Borderlands
Dr. Brunk has directed the following sustainability oriented PhD dissertations:
- Aaron Waggoner, “The New Wine: Spirit, Transformation, and Gender in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1960-1990” (2017)
- Joanne Kropp, “Constructing a River, Building a Border: An Environmental History of Irrigation, Water Law, State Formation, and the Rio Grande Rectification Project in the El Paso/Juárez Valley” (2016)
- Juana Moriel, “Drama a flor de piel: fiestas, capellanías y cofradías en San Joseph del Parral, Chihuahua, siglos XVII y XVIII” (2016)
d. Aaron Margolis, “La Otra Frontera: Exiles, Engineering, and State Power in the Chiapan Borderlands" (2015)
Jorge Gardea-Torresday, PhD - Department of Chemistry
Dr. Gardea-Torresdey has authored over 420 publications and issued 5 US patents for environmental remediation. Dr. Gardea has graduated 33 Ph.D. Students (26 in Environmental Science and Engineering, 6 in Chemistry and 1 in Material Sciences), and 29 students have received their M.Sc. degrees under his mentorship. Also he has mentored more than 35 undergraduate students in research.
He is co-investigator in the NSF/EPA funded “Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology” (UCCEIN).
He is also a co-investigator in the recently funded NSF Engineering Research Center "Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Systems" (NEWT).
Vanessa Lougheed, PhD - Department of Biology
Dr. Lougheed works broadly in the fields of environmental science and sustainabilit
A selection of her publications include:
- Lougheed, V.L., J.R. McLaren, C.E. Tweedie. Revitalizing the UTEP Green
Roof and Research Platform, funded by UTEP Green Fund. - Walsh, E., Doser, D., Hagedorn, E., Jin, L., Lougheed, V. TIERA: Training in
Environmental Research and Academic Success. U.S. Department of
Education - Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP) - Sowards, S. (Senior Personnel: Lougheed). Supporting Universities to Partner Across the Pacific funded by the USAID.
- Jin, L., Borrok, D., Ma, L., Lougheed. V. Natural and human impacts on soil development in the Rio Grande Valley: Sustainability of agriculture and water resources on the US-Mexico border. Funded by the Southwest Consortium for Environmental Research and Policy (SCERP).
- Velasco, A.A., Lougheed, V.L., Robertson, W.H. GK12: Science for a Sustainable Future: Developing the Next Generation of Diverse Scientists. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- Walsh, E., M.Cox, W-Y. Lee, and V. Lougheed. Developing Monitoring Systems for Emerging Contaminants in the Rio Grande. UTEP Border Biomedical Research Center Pilot Project.
- Esposito, G. and V. Lougheed. What is the role of habitat isolation and dispersal ability on genetic diversity of aquatic invertebrates in former ranchlands of the northern Chihuahuan Desert? Fundd by T&E, Inc.
- Lougheed, VL. Revisiting “The Limnology of Tundra Ponds”: Re-sampling historic sites to track global change in Arctic aquatic ecosystems. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- Lougheed, V.L. and K. Garza. URM Proposal: Mentoring of minority undergraduate research focused on the ecology of disease in the US-Mexico borderlands. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- Johnson, J., V. Lougheed, W. MacKay, C. Tweedie. Development of Indio Mountains Research Station, Phase III. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
- Lougheed, V.L. Improving capacities to examine water quantity and quality of ephemeral inputs to the Forgotten Stretch of the Rio Grande. Funded by the USIBWC Texas Clean Rivers Program.
Deanna Pennington, PhD - Department of Geological Sciences
EMBeRS. Dr. Pennington leads this collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation on learning to integrate across the natural and social sciences. This group is investigating how model-based reasoning enables construction of integrated conceptual frameworks across disciplines. See: http://embers.cybershare.utep.edu/
iLink@Cyber-Share. Dr. Pennington co-leads this Cyber-Share research group with Dr. Natalia Villanueva in UTEP Computer Science. The group investigates formal and informal knowledge representation, semantic approaches, and knowledge exchange in science.
Water Sustainability. This project, funded by the USDA, is engaging with stakeholders in the middle Rio Grande Valley to understand and develop strategies for improving future water resources in the region. Dr. Pennington leads the modeling group.
Lifemapper: Transforming Biodiversity Analysis with Landscapes, Automation, and Provenance. Dr. Pennington is Co-PI on this NSF-funded project that is creating new technologies for spatial distribution modeling, applied to biodiversity, drought, disease, and other phenomena that are distributed across space.
Jules Simon, PhD - Department of Philosophy
Dr. Simon has published broadly and teaches in the area of Sustainability Ethics and works with interdisciplinary hybrid graduate students to foster sustainability initiatives including including water treatment in the Rio Grande Valley Water Basin; alternative modes of public transportation; as well as sustainability and community health issues
He publishes in interdisciplinary venues, such as “Urban desertification and a phenomenology of sustainability: the case of El Paso, Texas” in Interdisciplinary Environmental Review
Stacey Sowards, PhD - Department of Communication
Department's coordinator for UTEP's master's program with the non-governmental organization, Rare. Rare is based in Arlington, Virginia, and works to protect endangered species and their habitats in more than 40 countries. Dr. Sowards also works with the Rare-UTEP training program for conservation campaigns at the Bogor Agricultural Institute in Indonesia with students/campaign managers who earn their M.A. degrees from the Department of Communication.
Dr. Sowards also chairs the President’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability.
Heidi Taboada, PhD - Department of Industrial Manufacturing and Systems Engineering
Dr. Toboada engages in research and teaching across several areas of sustainability and resilience projects in engineering
Select research publications in the area of sustainability:
- Villanueva-Rosales, Natalia ; Cheu, Ruey Long Kelvin ; Gates, Ann C ; Norma, Rivera ; Mondragon, Oscar ; Cabrera, Sergio D ; Ferregut, Carlos M ; Carrasco, Cesar J ; Nazarian, Soheil ; Taboada Jimenez, Heidi A - (2015). "A Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Initiative for a Smart Cities Innovation Network,." Proc. of 2015 IEEE First International Smart Cities Conference.
- Cheu, Ruey Long Kelvin ; Mondragon, Oscar ; Nazarian, Soheil ; Carrasco, Cesar J ; Gates, Ann C ; Cabrera, Sergio D ; Villanueva-Rosales, Natalia ; Ferregut, Carlos M ; Taboada Jimenez, Heidi A ; Balal, Esmaeil - (2015). "Research Challenges toward the Implementation of Smart Cities in the United States." Center for Transportation Infrastructure Systems.
- Chang Albitres, Carlos M ; Montes, Edith ; Taboada Jimenez, Heidi A ; Espiritu Nolasco, Jose F - (2014)."Allocating Transportation Funds using Fair Division Methods." ASCE Journal of Infrastructure Systems.
- Taboada Jimenez, Heidi A ; Espiritu Nolasco, Jose F ; Chang Albitres, Carlos M ; Cheu, Ruey Long Kelvin ; Ferregut, Carlos M ; Vargas Hernandez, Noe ; Vargas, Susana ; Sanchez, Eduardo ; Chang, Gererdo ; Quevedo, Valeria ; Marcelo, Daniel - (2014). "Developing global and regional sustainability engineering skills through a successful study abroad program." The Engineering Leaders Conference on Engineering Education.
- Chang Albitres, Carlos M ; Saenz, ; Espiritu Nolasco, Jose F ; Fullerton, Thomas M ; Montes, Edith ; Walke, Adam - (2013). "Using Fair Division Methods for Allocating Transportation Funds." Center for Transportation Infrastructure Systems.
Craig Tweedy, PhD - Department of Biology
Dr. Tweedy directs the Systems Ecology Laboratory (SEL) where researchers focus on understanding the biocomplexity associated with environmental change and plant and ecosystem structure and function in extreme environments – namely Arctic tundra and the Chihuahuan Desert.
Research Interest Areas: Climate change, Arctic and Antarctic ecology, desert ecology, biogeochemical cycling, plant phenology and primary productivity, plant-animal interactions, land use and land cover change, biocomplexity, landscape ecology, remote sensing, ecological modeling and disturbance ecology.
Shane Walker, PhD - Department of Civil Engineering
Dr. Walker works in the area of water resource management
He directs the Center for Inland Desalination Systems in El Paso, Texas and led a team of UTEP researchers that Placed 2nd in International Desalination Competition
His research focuses on water and wastewater treatment technologies and includes increasing water recovery, decreasing energy consumption, and recovering minerals from waste streams. He is a member of the National Science Foundation-funded Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) Engineering Research Center, which includes Rice, Yale, and Arizona State universities. Within the research center, he helps lead the Testbeds collaborations.
