Passionate about sustainability? Looking to make yourself more marketable? Pursue a minor in Sustainability Concepts and Practices. These courses will teach you about current sustainability concepts and technology, and how to apply what you've learned to any industry. Your role as a sustainability manager is to ensure that the company does all it can for the betterment of the environment and the organization.
Course Offerings
Environment and Society with Lab
Examine man's impact upon ecosystems and public health by identifying various sources of air contaminants, water contaminants, and soil contaminants and the composition of municipal and industrial waste. This course also covers society's use of and dependency upon energy and the fuels used to generate power and electricity, including fossil fuels, nuclear fuels, and alternative energy sources (solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal).
Sustainability: An Introduction
Learn about major environmental and social issues and trends happening in modern society from a multidisciplinary perspective. Topics will include the intellectual origins of sustainability, environmental law and regulation, pollution, water, climate, energy and public health.
Energy for a Sustainable Future
Explore different types of renewable and alternative energy. Topics will include renewable energy and the use, design, and application of solar, wind, tidal, and biomass energy.
Sustainability: The Human Footprint - Global Environmental Change in the Anthropocene
This course is a study of human impact on our larger biophysical environment; an impact that has grown to the point where we are now living in the ‘Anthropocene’, an era in which humans have become a key driver in the Earth’s system. Instructors will focus on the ways in which humans modify and interfere with the functioning of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, the atmosphere, the lithosphere, and the hydrosphere. The fundamental objective of the course is to provide students with a modern perspective on our growing human population, the increasing demands for resources to supply our consumptive economy, and the impact of local, regional, and global pollution.
Sustainability: Systems and Impacts
Gain the perspective of an industry professional by viewing sustainability in regards to product life cycle assessment, waste, supply chain management, just-in-time manufacturing, and the environmental impacts of these concepts. Students will be introduced to and apply the principles of life cycle assessment in business, determine ways to reduce waste, analyze waste types to determine recycling/reuse options, and how to effectively report on these concepts to business leaders.
And two of the following:
Technology Gaps to Sustainable Development
Study the use of technology and its gaps as applied to sustainable development in the U.S. and abroad. Students will be introduced to and apply the principles of the Human Development Index and its use in sustainable development. The focus will be on the use of technology in the past and in “visioning” a better future with better technology, a better future with more environmentally conscious technology to minimize the impact of today on future generations.
Environmental Resources Economics - Transition to Sustainability
Examine how people make choices when their unlimited wants meet scarce resources. Human technology has developed far enough to challenge the limits of the finite globe. This course is intended to provide students with an understanding of if or how finite resources of the globe can be sustained for the future within our present economic system of globalization.
Sustainability: Moving Principles to Action
Move from being the student to educating as a teacher. Learning alone will not change how or why things are done in the world today, but through application and education of residents of Earth, differences can be transformed into strengths that will provide enough for today as well as generations to follow. Topics of discussion and education will be focused, but will not be limited to, the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
Sustainability: Past, Present and Future
Explore the historic and current trends in sustainability and analyze the impact that they are having on a global scale. From this trend analysis, students will theorize what future trends should be.