ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability involves balancing the needs of human societies with the health of the ecosystems that surround and support them. It also challenges us to behave ethically across generations: how can today’s societies meet their needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs?

This challenge is growing sharper every day: by the middle of this century, we can expect the human population of our planet to have increased by 50 percent, to a total of about 9 billion people. Rapid population and economic growth is producing a number of related concerns: global warming, dwindling oil supplies, extreme weather events, shrinking water supplies, and the accelerating resource requirements of developing nations like India and China.

These emerging issues call for a new category of experts who can develop and implement the strategies we need to reach a state of sustainability.  The Environmental Sustainability major at Philadelphia University prepares you to serve as one of those experts (click here for more information about the growing career opportunities in the sustainability field).

Designing a sustainable operation, whether at the local, national or global level, requires a comprehensive approach that understands the political, cultural, scientific, economic, and technological context of the relationship between humans and their ecosystems. Sustainability professionals need to be able to think across these different areas and speak to a variety of experts and audiences in their own “languages.”

The Bachelor of Science in Environmental Sustainability equips students with the skills and vocabularies to bridge the multiple disciplines—architecture, design, business, engineering, and policymaking—necessary to produce environmentally sustainable operations for communities, businesses and organizations. This program produces creative problem solvers with the interdisciplinary training necessary to build the sustainable societies of the future.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

• The only environmental program in the region with training across multiple professional fields: architecture, public policy, business, engineering, international relations and natural resource management.
  
  
• Internship opportunities and multiple elective courses allow students to gain professional experience before graduation and to customize their major according to their career objectives.
  
  
• Strong training in both the sciences and social/political issues gives students a breadth of skills and positions them for graduate study in law, business, public policy and other fields.

Click here to print our fact sheet for the Environmental Sustainability major.  This includes a full listing of the required courses.

Careers in Environmental Sustainability: click here for the latest news about careers for sustainability professionals in the Philadelphia region, the U.S., and the world.

For more information, please contact Tom Schrand, Chair of Environmental Sustainability, at SchrandT@PhilaU.edu .