The University of Strathclyde has launched a new MSc Sustainability programme with the aim to build graduates who will go on to become sustainability professionals in a global world, an official release said.
As per the release, Strathclyde’s new programme draws on the sustainability expertise from all four faculties – Business, Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Science and offers an opportunity to work in interdisciplinary groups with people from all over the world. Students can choose to focus in on a specific learning interest, ensuring the programme caters to an individual’s needs and career pathways.
In line with Strathclyde’s ethos of being ‘a place of useful learning’, the programme includes a sharing of expertise by invited sustainability experts including activists, entrepreneurs and policymakers and work on real life challenges that combined dealing with social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability to develop new solutions.
Future thinking
The programme is developed following pedagogical principles for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) both in terms of content but also of skills and competencies for the participants. These are adhered to throughout the curriculum, ensuring that sustainability competencies like systems, future thinking and core values that support responsible and global citizenship and are embedded throughout the programme.
Taught classes include compulsory and optional choices. Compulsory classes will teach the basic principles and pillars of sustainability, understanding and using complex frameworks like the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for assessing what makes a sustainable organisation, project or policy initiative and unpicking the links between climate change and sustainable development.
A wider list of optional classes is also included offering greater flexibility in tailoring study for students to choose from at the start of the course. Specialist tracks are offered by the four faculties and comprise of: business challenges and responsible resource management; novel economic approaches for sustainability; social inequalities and policy for sustainability; environmental resources and health. The course director will help each student build their curriculum on the basis of their background and interests while choosing classes under one of the four tracks.
There are multiple opportunities for students to engage with sustainability and build their skill set for the world of work while at Strathclyde. Sustainable Strathclyde offers activities that can boost your skills further either within our campus, including engagement with the Climate Neutral Glasgow City Innovation District projects and students will have the chance to work on challenges and projects that demonstrate how environmental, social and economic issues can be tackled in collaboration with community partners.
Skills for working in interdisciplinary teams and addressing systemic and ‘wicked’ problems to global challenges are key to the programme with concepts such as circularity, wellbeing and prosperity, working within planetary boundaries, and the role of development processes in relation to local and global inequalities being within the themes covered.
Green economy
“Sustainability requires a balance between responsible use of natural resources and consideration of the environment while dealing with societal and economic needs and this programme holds this at its core. Green jobs require new ways of thinking to respond to the urgent and dramatic challenges the planet faces. This provides emerging opportunities for shaping a green economy as well as responsible citizens that can operate effectively within planetary boundaries. The skills this programme offers will be crucial for shaping the changemakers of the future,” Eirini Gallou, teaching fellow, course director, said.
The MSc Sustainability has four scholarships on offer worth £2,000 each, the release further noted.