Last week, in an unanimous vote, Furman faculty approved addition of a new degree program in Sustainability Science within the Earth and Environmental Sciences department. Furman is one of a handful of schools that offers a rigorous, interdisciplinary science degree in sustainability area in the country.
The Sustainability Science major focuses on the critical linkages between global environmental, human, and social systems. The Sustainability Science focuses on how humans and the environment affect one another on a variety of spatial and temporal scales, and how changes in one system affect others. For example, what social changes need to be made to address Global Warming, and how will implementing those changes affect various communities both culturally and economically? This model highlights the centrality of complex systems analysis, which will be emphasized in the curriculum of the major.
Thus, Sustainability Science integrates social, economic, and governance systems into the analyses of environmental change and resource availability and acknowledges that feedbacks in both natural and social systems play an important role in either accelerating or slowing change. This core skill of thinking about complex systems is valuable to all disciplines, and is absolutely necessary to Sustainability Science and will be emphasized within the major.
Students pursuing this degree will take one introductory course, four core courses, five upper level elective courses that are distributed across disciplines, MTH 150, and complete a senior thesis. Because of the degree of potential overlap of electives between Sustainability Science major and Earth and Environmental Science major, students will not be allowed to double major in both EES and SUS.
