SUSTSCI-MS - Sustainability Science and Practice (MS)
Download as PDF
Program Learning Outcomes
The Sustainability Science and Practice program integrates theoretical and conceptual knowledge, mindsets, and practical skills to enable students to understand and manage complex systems, understand decision-making and develop strategies for change, and cultivate partnerships and design innovations with potential for impact at scale.
The program prepares students to become effective participants and agents of change as individuals and within organizations across all sectors of society, contributing to the advancement of sustainability, i.e., the well-being of people around the world and across generations.
Program learning outcomes are organized around three core curricular elements:
Element 1: Understanding Complex Social-Environmental Systems
Students develop a “systems perspective,” deepening their awareness of the dynamic and interrelated nature of social-environmental systems. They explore frameworks and tools to understand, measure, and map complex social-environmental systems and their interactions to recognize potential feedbacks, thresholds, and unintended consequences, as well as to identify leverage points and opportunities for interventions that advance sustainability.
Learning outcomes:
Understand and evaluate sustainability challenges using frameworks that build holistic understanding of the complex social-environmental systems in which sustainability challenges play out.
Analyze the characteristics of complex systems that make interventions for sustainability challenging. For example, students will examine the importance of cross-scale issues, feedback mechanisms, non-linearities, and resilience and vulnerability in social-environmental systems in influencing success or failure in a range of sustainability efforts (including corporate and civil society).
Appreciate and understand diverse perspectives and voices – including, but not limited to, nonprofit, government, and corporate partners, as well as community and indigenous voices–in addressing sustainability challenges.
Element 2: Understanding Decision-Making and Developing Strategies for Change
Students examine the roles of diverse actors influencing change in social-environmental systems and explore strategies to align decision-making and behavior with sustainability. They explore the mindsets and approaches of transformative leaders and examine effective strategies for advancing sustainability across sectors. Students develop decision-making skills in complex and uncertain contexts, use metrics and evaluation approaches aligned with sustainability goals, cultivate leadership orientations, and practice effective communications and storytelling approaches.
Learning outcomes:
Understand and develop orientations and competencies required to lead transformative change in a VUCA world (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity).
Understand and describe strategies, approaches and models for advancing sustainability in organizations and society.
Understand behavioral and systemic barriers to sustainability and strategies for overcoming them.
Element 3: Designing Innovations with Impact at Scale
Students develop an understanding of how to intervene in complex systems for transformative impact by exploring frameworks and tools from systems thinking, design thinking, social cognitive theory, behavioral economics, and partnership strategies. They develop practical skills to understand complexity, analyze root causes, and design high-leverage intervention pathways that realign systems with the goal of intergenerational well-being.
Learning outcomes:
Develop an introductory understanding of and ability to apply systems transformation theory, methodology, and philosophy.
Develop skills to innovate at the system level and design high-level system transformation interventions.
Articulate a transformation strategy, underpinned by systems theory and a robust theory of change.
See Sustainability Science and Practice for more information about the program and admissions.