Knowledge & Skills Gained

What Will You Gain From a Minor in Sustainability?

Interdisciplinary programs are those programs that don't fit neatly into a predefined box. They cross the traditional lines of academic categorization to draw upon and add knowledge to multiple disciplines. They invoke art, science, music, culture and society to better understand complex ideas.

Knowledge and Skills Gained with a Sustainability Minor

Knowledge of sustainability, its various sub-disciplines, major themes, and analytical techniques

Understanding of the global ecosystem and the political, economic, and cultural forces acting upon it

Appreciation for nature

Identification of opportunities for sustainability across every major and discipline on campus

Ability to examine written material and oral presentations critically

Ability to gather relevant data and to use insight, knowledge, reasoning, and scientific skills to analyze that data and develop logical solutions

Ability and desire to engage with problems of sustainability, and find solutions that work across sectors of society

Ability to communicate ideas and information effectively, both verbally and in writing

Why interdisciplinary studies?

Creativity often requires interdisciplinary knowledge.
Immigrants to disciplines often make important contributions to their new field.
Disciplinarians often commit errors which can be best detected by people familiar with two or more disciplines.
Some worthwhile topics of research fall in the interstices among the traditional disciplines.
Many intellectual, social, and practical problems require interdisciplinary approaches.
Interdisciplinary knowledge and research serve to remind us of the unity-of-knowledge ideal.
Interdisciplinarians enjoy greater flexibility in their research.
More so than narrow disciplinarians, interdisciplinarians often treat themselves to the intellectual equivalent of traveling in new lands.
Interdisciplinarians may help breach communication gaps in the modern academy, thereby helping to mobilize its enormous intellectual resources in the cause of greater social rationality and justice.
By bridging fragmented disciplines, interdisciplinarians might play a role in the defense of academic freedom