Sustainability Degrees Growing in Popularity
August 10, 2009 · Print This Article
The world is about to welcome a whole new generation of sustainability experts, bigger than ever before – and it couldn’t have come at a better time. College students are flocking to sustainability programs in droves, graduating with the knowledge they need to help guide the world to a greener, more sustainable way of life.
From Earth 911:
With an emphasis on trans- and interdisciplinary research and teaching, schools such as Stony Brook, Colorado State University, the University of Washington, Arizona State University, the University of Pennsylvania and others are incorporating sustainability into subjects such as business, architecture, biological science, social science and more.
Some universities are even creating stand-alone schools related to sustainability. Additionally, According to the Association for Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s (AASHE) most recent count, 66 sustainability-oriented academic programs were created in 2008.
The academic knowledge base of sustainability will likely continue to be needed and expanded as more “green collar” jobs emerge.
With the noticeable increase in academic programs related to sustainability, universities increasingly appear up to the task of educating the next generation of leaders so that they might tackle the pertinent environmental, social and economic issues of our age.
We profiled some of the nation’s best undergraduate sustainability programs earlier this year in an article entitled ‘Becoming Tomorrow’s Green Leaders: Top Environmental Undergrad Programs’. Among the chosen colleges and universities are Middlebury College in Vermont, Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, Northland College in Wisconsin and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Want to learn more? The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has an exhaustive list of schools offering various kinds of environmental programs available on their website.
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These are positive signs indeed. The fact that environmental issues are now more commonly integrated into various degree courses shows that at last the subject is been taken more seriously. But it seems movement towards change is still too slow. Programs related to sustainability should be taught to children as early as possible and it should be given as much attention as established subjects like science or history. We need a whole generation of children to be aware of the issues facing their local and global environment, so that they can be better prepared to make the decisions that are needed to change the world.