Pursuing Sustainability: Managing Complex Social Environmental Systems

Catalog description

This course considers and utilizes systems frameworks, models and approaches for thinking about, designing efforts for, and pursuing sustainability in complex, adaptive, intertwined social-environmental systems. Sustainability, for this course, is defined as inter and intra-generational social well-being, which requires equity and inclusion as well as the availability of social resources and Earth and environmental resources. This course is intended to be useful no matter what sustainability topic is of interest to our students (e.g., clean and accessible energy; food security; human health and environment; water resources and security; education, etc). The course illustrates the challenges of working toward sustainability in complex, rapidly changing systems, and offers several frameworks that can help in dealing within such systems. It provides an overview of how to intervene in complex systems to pursue sustainability, including visioning, collaboration, and change theories; governing for sustainability; and strategies, tools, and metrics that that assist with the pursuit of sustainability goals. The course draws on readings from one core text (Matson et al. 2016) as well as from a variety of other published literature and case studies. Enrollment open to seniors and graduate students only. Priority given to SUST coterms and students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate for Sustainability Decision Making. To request a permission code for this course, please fill out this form by October 3, 2025: https://forms.gle/31eBC7nnCNi5BNDW7