Environmental Sustainability constitutes a pattern of resource use that meets human needs while preserving the environment, so that these needs can be met not only in the present but also for future generations. Sustainability has become a wide-ranging concept that applies to all components of a community’s functional infrastructure: from homes to industries, from town conservation commissions and municipalities to town planning departments. Sustainability concerns how we should live, how business firms and manufacturing companies should operate, what town planners should do, and what policies are needed for maintaining our natural resources and developing ecological systems for long-term maintenance of our well-being.
The Graduate Certificate in Environmental Sustainability and Policy is designed to provide students with knowledge of the following areas:
- Understanding of environmental ecosystems and how they work to support life and long-term sustainability
- Geographical ,scientific, economic and political considerations for framing sustainable policy-making;
- How the tenants of sustainability can be applied to frame environmental policies for town planning departments and municipalities
- Methods of developing sustainable technologies and distributed energy systems
- Design of sustainable urban systems, ranging from transportation to electric power distribution to waste disposal systems
- Methods of utilizing renewable resources (such as wind and geothermal), bio fuels, and non-centralized power generation and local distribution to meet our energy needs
- Designing sustainable infrastructural systems for communities and cities
The Certificate is relevant to all the workforce in the functional, business and administrative components of a community, including personnel working in schools, conservation commissions, municipalities, industries dealing with biophysical resources and waste disposals, town planning departments, and law firms engaged in infrastructural policy-making.
- Manufacturing and Construction industry personnel for operating in an environmental protective mode
- Municipalities and Conservation Departments for planning infrastructural systems
- Town Planning Departments and Law Firms involved in developing policies
- School Teachers interested in teaching about environmental sustainability
- All those engaged in the collective endeavor to maintain our natural ecosystems for our present and future needs
Admission Requirements
The applicant must have earned a Baccalaureate degree from a regionally accredited college or university in any field. Students must have completed an undergraduate level physics and chemistry course as prerequisites.
Curriculum Requirements
The following four (4) courses are required:
ENVS 907 Environmental Sustainability
ENVS 927 Sustainable Environmental Policy
ENVS 937 Sustainable Energy Management: Production and Conservation
ENVS 947 Design of Sustainable Communities
Program Coordinator: Dr. Osama Abdelgader, Associate Professor of the Geography Department
Notes:
- Requirements are accurate to date. However, the University reserves the right to change requirements in the future, and will notify applicants should any changes be made.
