In response to an increasingly more environmentally aware national job market, MSU has created a sustainability specialization in a move officials said will bridge academic disciplines from numerous of colleges.
Administered by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, CANR, the specialization also was created to meet growing student demand for such a concentration and will be offered starting this fall, said Frank Fear, senior associate dean of CANR.
The specialization will be available to students in the College of Arts and Letters, College of Natural Science, College of Social Science, the Eli Broad College of Business and James Madison College.
Geoffrey Habron, the new program’s director and associate professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, will teach the specialization’s introductory course.
The specialization will require 18 credits, but the majority of those credits will come from evidence students compile into portfolios, demonstrating their knowledge of sustainability concepts, said Laurie Thorp, program director for the Residential Initiative on the Study of the Environment and assistant director for the specialization.
“We want our students to understand that sustainability isn’t just about greening the planet, it isn’t just about energy conservation,” Thorp said. “You have to be able to integrate the social, the economic and the ecological.”
Habron and Thorp have been developing the program for about three years based on interest from students who were working on projects concerning sustainability, and wanted something official on their transcripts, Habron said.
Although the introductory class did not become available until later in the spring scheduling period, Thorp said the 30-person class is nearly full.
“It’s really gratifying to see the student response to this,” she said.
Geoffrey Booth, the acting associate dean of academic affairs and research of the Eli Broad College of Business, said students in the new specialization could have more success finding a job out of college because recruiters have been interested in what MSU offers in terms of sustainability.
“Natural resources are being used up and not being replenished,” he said. “We need to think about these things, and the younger generation is taking it on.”
Because his research deals largely with sustainability issues, packaging graduate student Jim Fitzsimmons said he intends to add the specialization, despite it being for undergraduates.
“Sustainability is the latest and greatest buzzword in any industry,” Fitzsimmons said.
“I would expect an interest based on the needs of our global climate.”
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