Sustainability BA

The Sustainability major at Ramapo College equips students to apply a whole-systems approach to address complex ecological, economic and social problems in ways that transcend the conventional disciplinary mindset. 

Businesses, governmental agencies, non-profits, media and community groups are all increasingly recognizing their need for individuals with expertise in a systems approach to the triple bottom line, one that integrates society, ecology and economy, to consider our present-day crises in some holistic way. 

Our sustainability major combines theoretical knowledge with experiential learning to provide students  with depth in Sustainability thinking and practice, and a set of transferable skills which can be applied to many other fields, rooted in civic engagement, social justice and personal transformation. 

This BA in Sustainability consists of twelve courses – 48 credits – which is designed to be coupled with  the Environmental Studies  Minor (ENST). It is possible, in consultation with the Convener, to exchange the ENST Minor for any one of a list of other minors.   

Within the SUST Major, three Foundational Courses focus on sustainability from socio-cultural, business, and ecological perspectives, approximating the “triple bottom line conception” of profit, people and planet.  After these three courses, students move to a writing  intensive Integrative Seminar in Sustainability. Students also take two required core courses and  choose four out of five electives that ground students in the practice of sustainability by focusing on themes such as organizational leadership, mixed methods research, environmental justice, energy policy, and climate change. The program culminates with two capstone courses, which focus on independent student projects that highlight practice-based, process-oriented approaches to address the many pressing social, ecological and economic issues facing humanity.

As mentioned above, this is a genuinely unique major, intentionally designed to be coupled with a wide array of Minors.  We encourage students to choose from a broad range of Minors(include link), such as (but not limited to) Environmental Studies, Business Management, Accounting, Anthropology, Climate Change, Policy and Action, Contemplative Studies, Creative Writing, Economics, Theatre, etc.  

The intention is to allow truly trans-disciplinary interpretations of the full range of conceptions of whole-system sustainability.  Our central argument is that sustainability as a field is much wider in scope than just environmental concerns.  The common association of the word sustainability with actions like recycling and nature conservation is an idea that needs to be broadened to include all cases of human choice-making across time.  

We strongly support environmentalism, nature conservation, recycling and so on, but we want to take sustainability far beyond these obvious connections.  We see this field to be connectable to many aspects of human activity.