This course explores legal approaches to avoiding and resolving conflicts between human use of coastal areas and the ecological integrity of coastal systems. We will cover relevant South Carolina and Federal law, looking at issues both above and below the tide line. Course readings represent a variety of disciplines, including law, economics, and the natural sciences.

This course develops essential leadership and management skills for effective public safety administration, covering legal, ethical, and organizational responsibilities. Students will learn to navigate moral dilemmas, promote integrity, optimize operations, and manage risks. They will also explore the role of agency culture and how to foster a positive environment, ensuring they are prepared to lead with vision and excellence.

This course emphasizes evidence-based practices, teaching students to integrate research-informed and data-driven insights into public safety operations and evaluate impacts. It covers the latest research, analytical techniques, and the importance of collaborative research partnerships. Students will learn to cultivate a culture of continuous learning to address challenges, enhance public trust, and drive positive change through evidence-based practices.

This course provides public safety leaders with a legal and practical understanding of advancing civil rights through effective administration. It covers the origins of law enforcement authority, civil rights litigation, and key issues like racial profiling and protest response. Students will develop their own leadership approach to promote justice, respect, and equal protection under the law.

This course covers best practices and legal requirements for human resource management in public safety agencies. Students will learn to navigate organizational change, leadership roles, and strategies for improving hiring, assessment, and retention of qualified officers. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to handle complex HR challenges, promote a positive culture, and ensure a fair working environment.

This course equips students to understand crime drivers and develop community-centered solutions, leveraging public partnership for safety. Students will learn social determinants of public safety, multi-disciplinary interventions and co-responder models, preparing them as executives to advance collaborative, community-focused solutions.

This course teaches public safety leaders to use near misses and unintended outcomes to improve future performance. Through case studies of critical incidents and sentinel event reviews, students will learn to identify system weaknesses and develop, implement, and assess recommendations for improvement. By course end, students will be equipped to lead organizations in learning from negative outcomes and conducting comprehensive, forward-looking reviews for better performance.

This course develops skills for fostering strong relationships with staff, communities, media, and policymakers through effective communication. Students will gain practical experience in applying communication principles to support trust and collaboration among key stakeholders.

This course helps public safety executives apply their knowledge to real-world challenges through individualized research and practical projects, developing actionable strategies to enhance public safety and leadership. This capstone experience bridges academic learning with practical implementation, preparing graduates to advance effective public safety services.

Government agencies regulate almost every area of our lives. Many lawyers work for government agencies and many other lawyers work for people whose lives are affected by these agencies. Virtually every lawyer needs to know how government agencies operate. That is the subject of this course. The course is recommended for students interested in substantive areas in which agencies play an important role, such as environmental law, health-care law, and securities law (to name a few).

This course explores essential financial principles for public safety administrators, including budgeting, revenue streams, financial reporting, and legal obligations, to optimize resource allocation and maintain public trust. Students will learn to conduct cost-benefit analyses, develop long-term financial strategies, and create strategic budgets and plans that align with agency objectives and community needs.

This course equips public safety leaders with the knowledge and tools to navigate complex ethical dilemmas through ethical theories, case studies, and real-world scenarios. Students will develop a strong legal and ethical framework to address rapidly evolving challenges, including technology, artificial intelligence and cybercrime, ensuring transparency, privacy, and public trust in their decision-making.

This course examines evidence-based approaches to crime prevention, focusing on crime patterns, social determinants, and community engagement. Students will learn to design locality-specific strategies using data, technology, and collaboration with communities and interagency partners to develop and evaluate comprehensive crime prevention plans.

This course equips public safety leaders with strategies to prioritize the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of their personnel, addressing stress, burnout, and resilience. Students will learn legal requirements and evidence-based approaches to enhance officer wellness, fitness, and support, ultimately fostering a supportive and resilient work environment.

This is an introductory course in environmental law. The purpose is to give interested students a background in a number of federal environmental statutes, including NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act) ESA (Endangered Species Act) and CWA (Clean Water Act).

This seminar will explore legal and regulatory options for addressing global climate change. We will begin with materials examining the scientific evidence and projections of climate change, then move on to attempts at international legal and quasi-legal mechanisms, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Copenhagen Accord. We will also cover U.S. domestic climate policy options, including regulation under the Clean Air Act and at state level, and contrast these policies with those in place in other developed economies. Throughout, we will discuss the uniquely difficult challenges climate change creates for institutions, society, and the legal system.

This course explores the foundations, tenets and practices of the environmental justice movement, with its focus on centering and addressing the needs of people and communities that bear disproportionate environmental burdens. Although we will explore case law as appropriate, much of the course focuses on the ways that this social movement has necessarily deviated from a judicial-centered notion of justice. The course will include examinations of the history and theory of environmental justice in the United States, its application to a range of case studies, and its intersections with other emerging fields of justice studies—including climate change justice, energy justice, and food justice. We will pay particular attention to the ways that race, ethnicity, and class have shaped the challenges, tools, and politics of environmental justice.

This course provides an introduction to the law and regulation of energy resources, primarily in the United States, focused on three core areas within the field. The first part of the course will cover extraction of energy resources, primarily coal, oil, and natural gas. The second part will cover regulation of the electricity generation and distribution system, including public utility and rate regulation, transmission, and relevant environmental regulations. The final part of the course will address legal and regulatory issues specific to nuclear and renewable energy, with a particular focus on the Southeast. Throughout, the course will focus on the ability (or inability) of legal and regulatory regimes to keep pace with rapid change in the energy sector.