Students canoeing. PC: Avery Burke-Doyle

Sustainable Development Minor

The Sustainable Development minor is designed to enable more students to augment their education with critical interdisciplinary skills and knowledge needed to address the urgent and complex challenges of sustainable development.

Five courses are required for the minor. Students will take courses within the following framework:

I. EESC 2330 Science for Sustainable Development
II. SDEV 2300 Challenges of Sustainable Development
III. One course from Analysis & Solutions to Complex Problems Requirement Area
IV. Second course from Analysis & Solutions to Complex Problems Requirement Area
V. One course from Skills/Actions Requirement Area

For course descriptions and scheduling, check out the sustainable development Bulletin. No course substitutions will be accepted for the minor. 

I. EESC 2330 Science for Sustainable Development

Offered in fall only. The course provides students with the natural science basis to appreciate co-dependencies of natural and human systems, which are central to understanding sustainable development.  After completing the course, students should be able to incorporate scientific approaches into their research or policy decisions and be able to use scientific methods of data analysis.  The semester will highlight the climate system and solutions from both physical and ecological perspectives; water resources; food production and the cycling of nutrients; and the role of biodiversity in sustainable development.  The course emphasizes key scientific concepts such as uncertainty, experimental versus observational approaches, prediction and predictability, the use of models and other essential methodological aspects.

II. SDEV 2300 Challenges of Sustainable Development

Offered in spring only. This course provides an introduction to the field of sustainable development, drawing primarily from social science and policy studies. It offers a critical examination of the concept of sustainable development, showing how factors like economics, population, culture, politics and inequality complicate its goals. Students will learn how different social science disciplines (political science, demography, economics, geography, history, law, and sociology) approach challenges of sustainable development across a variety of topics (fisheries, climate change, air pollution, consumption, energy, conservation, and water management). The course provides students with some of the fundamental concepts, vocabulary, and analytical tools to pursue and think critically about sustainable development. 

III. Analysis & Solutions to Complex Problems Requirement Area (two courses)

  1. ANTH 3932 Climate Change, Global Migration, and Human Rights in the Anthropocene
  2. CIEE 3260 Engineering for Developing Communities
  3. EAEE 4304 Closing the Carbon Cycle
  4. ECIA 4100 Management and Development of Water Systems
  5. EESC 3032 Agricultural and Urban Land Use: Human-Environment Interactions
  6. EESC 4600 Earth Resources & Sustainable Development
  7. EEEB 4135 Urban Ecology and Design
  8. HIST 3712 African Climate and History
  9. HIST 4811 Encounters with Nature: The History of Environment and Health in South Asia and Beyond
  10. PUBH 3100 Fundamentals of Global Health
  11. PUBH 4200 Environment, Health and Justice
  12. SDEV 3330 Ecological and Social Systems for Sustainable Development
  13. SDEV 3355 Climate Change and Law
  14. SDEV 3360 Disasters and Development
  15. SDEV 3366 Energy Law
  16. SDEV 3410 Cities and Sustainability
  17. URBS 3565 Cities in Developing Countries: Problems and Prospects
  18. SDEV 4250 Climate Change Adaptation
  19. SDEV 4350 Public Lands in the American West
  20. SDEV 4650 Building Climate Justice: Co-Creative Coastal Resilience Planning

IV. Skills/Actions Requirement Area (one course)

  1. EAEE 4257 Environmental Data Analysis and Modeling
  2. EESC 4050 Global Assessment and Monitoring Using Remote Sensing
  3. EESC 3050 Big Data with Python: Python for Environmental Analysis and Visualization
  4. SDEV 2320 Economic and Financial Methods for Sustainable Development
  5. SDEV 3390 GIS for Sustainable Development
  6. SDEV 3450 Spatial Analysis and Modeling for Sustainable Development
  7. SDEV 4101 Qualitative Research Methods for Sustainable Development
  8. SDEV 4240 Science Communications
  9. SOCI 3010 Methods for Social Research
  10. SUMA 4100 Sustainability Management