Instructor

Munish Kumar Chandel, Swatantra Pratap Singh, Virendra Sethi

Section

S1

Semester

Spring ‘20

Course Difficulty

The course is not very difficult, and easy to score well in by being regular with the classes. The professors discuss the question banks in class in great detail, and most of the questions are directly from them or are derivatives of them. For this course, there is definitely some mugging up to do, and it’s not a big deal if you have been following the course but is quite difficult and tedious if you are looking at the syllabus just before the examination.

Time Commitment Required

3-5 hours per week

Grading Policy and Statistics

The grading statistics were decent, but not too lenient.
The grading of the assignments was very erratic and non-transparent (no feedback). It also varied a lot as the TAs had not been given a detailed marking scheme for assignments, and some TAs were very lenient whereas others were very strict (especially in the Municipal Solid Waste module). This was rectified to an extent after a lot of complaints from the students.

Pre-requisites

No prerequisites at all

Evaluation Scheme

Module A - Air Quality (34%):
Homeworks (2) - 14%
Endsem - 20%

Module B - Municipal Solid Waste (33%):
Homework - 15%
Endsem - 18%

Module C - Pollution (33%):
Homework - 10%
Endsem - 23%

Topics Covered in the Course

Air Quality: Pollution standards, diseases, non-containment cities, dispersion models

Municipal Solid Waste management: composting, dumping methods, energy recovery, recycling, Biomedical Waste management, Climate Change, Green Technology

Pollution: Environmental problems, ecosystem and biodiversity, environmental awareness and sustainable development, water resources and quality, pollution, water treatment system

Tutorials/Assignments/Projects

AQ assignments were stimulating and required research. The first assignment required us to watch two movies of opposing views on global warming, and we had to turn in a critical review / essay discuss our views and the movies. The second assignment required us to analyze an air quality situation in our hometown, and come up with a plan to deal with it using the allocated budget.

MSW assignment was a mix of research and opinion based questions, with a majority of the assignment focusing on MSW management in our hometown, and the rest focusing on MSWM in other countries, plastic usage, global warming, etc.

Pollution (module C) assignment required us to research, analyze and report the water quality and supply situation in our hometown.

Feedback on Exams

The final exams of all three modules were of moderate difficulty. The numerical questions from AQ module or the guesstimate question from the MSW module were fairly simple to answer. The other questions were mostly directly from the slide, or were result of direct class discussion from the question banks shared for each module.

Course Importance

The concepts taught in this course, raise awareness about important environmental issues, how they affect us, and the methods and shortcomings of the current management process. It is of great importance for the future generation of leaders and decision makers to be aware of such issues, and consider them as a significant factor of influence while taking actions that can affect the environment and the populace’s long-term well-being.

ES 200 Review By: Shubham Lohiya