Learn how to realistically implement modern sustainability practices in the work place. Students who choose this path benefit from Findlay's ongoing sustainability initiatives including solar and wind turbine powered student housing, a biodiesel converter, a 54-acre natural habitat used as a living laboratory and activities including the Ohio Student Sustainability Leader Conference.
What These Jobs Do:
- Influence companies to adopt new technology
- Investigate updates to technology
- Imagine innovative practices
- Communicate the importance of sustainability
- Create new sustainability strategies to position companies for new growth
Course Offerings
In addition to the core ESH&S courses, you can take the following elective courses that are geared toward the practice of sustainability.
Environmental & Resource Economics - Transition to Sustainability (3 hrs)
This course is designed to examine how people make choices when their unlimited wants meet scarce resources. Human technology has developed far enough to challenge the limits of the finite globe. This course is intended to provide students an understanding of if or how finite resources of the globe can be sustained for the future within our present economic system of globalization. Areas of focus for the course will include; economics of pollution generation and its control, property rights and their impact upon the design of environmental policy, emission taxes, marketable credits, regulatory standards, and subsidies as potential pollution control tools, economics and policy of contemporary relevant environmental issues associated with renewable resources (fisheries, forests) and non-renewable resources (oil and natural gas), and air pollution as it relates to climate change. This course will provide a bridge to other ESOH courses that concern hazard evaluation, monitoring and control, compliance audits, and enforcement.
Energy for a Sustainable Future (3 hrs)
This course introduces students to the concepts and types of renewable and alternative energy. Topics will include renewable energy and the use, design, and application of solar, wind, tidal, and biomass energy. The course introduces perspectives from engineering and professional disciplines and explores how renewable energy use is needed for a sustainable future.
Sustainability: The Human Footprint - Global Environmental Change in the Anthropocene (3 hrs)
This course is a study of human impact on our larger biophysical environment; an impact that has grown to the point where we are now living in the ‘Anthropocene’, an era in which humans have become a key driver in the Earth’s system. The course will focus on the ways in which humans modify and interfere with the functioning of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, the atmosphere, the lithosphere, and the hydrosphere. The course will explore human population growth and environmental problems as these have evolved over time. The fundamental objective of the course is to provide students with a modern perspective on our growing human population, the increasing demands for resources to supply our consumptive economy, and the impact of local, regional, and global pollution.
Sustainability: Systems and Impacts (3 hrs)
This course is a study of systems thinking as it is applied to sustainability in regards to product life cycle assessment, waste, supply chain management, just-in-time manufacturing, and the environmental impacts of these concepts. Students will be introduced to and apply the principles of life cycle assessment in business, determine ways to reduce waste, analyze waste types to determine recycling/reuse options, and how to effectively report on these concepts to business leaders.
Technology Gaps to Sustainable Development (3 hrs)
This course is a study of the use of technology and its gaps as applied to sustainable development in the U.S. and abroad. Students will be introduced to and apply the principles of the Human Development Index and its use in sustainable development. The focus will be on the use of technology in the past and in “visioning” a better future with better technology, a better future with more environmentally conscious technology to minimize the impact of today on future generations.
Sustainability: Moving Principles to Action (3 hrs)
This course applies the principles of sustainability as part of a capstone project from the culmination of topics outlined by the sustainability tract. The role of the student is to transition to become the teacher through the dissemination of cultivated knowledge in a manner that is concise and direct to peers while still applicable to a wide audience. Learning alone will not change how or why things are done in the world today, but through application and education of residents of Earth differences can be transformed into strengths that will provide enough for today as well as generations to follow. Topics of discussion and education will be focused, but will not be limited to, the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
Sustainability: Past, Present & Future (3 hrs)
This course is an exploration of the current impacts of sustainability application in the “real world” as part of the culmination of topics outlined by the sustainability tract. Students will explore the historic and current trends in sustainability and analyze the impact that these trends are having on a global scale. From this trend analysis students will theorize what future trends should be.