Sun Devils listen to their better (and sustainable) angels.
April 8th, 2007 by Matt
More and more we’re seeing colleges and universities step up to the progressive plate offering up degrees that will help companies and governments in terms of sustainability. A new program at Arizona State University blends together study in “environment, economics, and social challenges.”
According to a piece in April 2007 issue of Fast Company, this new graduate degree will help teach students “how to make best use of limited natural resources while providing for continued growth.” This is particularly an issue in the Grand Canyon State, where the population has grown by 25% since 1990 (the same has happened in New Mexico), and in Nevada where the population has more than doubled in the same time.
These graduate students (and future Jeopardy contestants) will learn “to identify and provide solutions…[regarding] rapid urban growth, sustainable energy and material use, and water management.” The latter being a serious concern in arid areas such as the Southwest (casually calling it “just a dry heat” is like calling Charles Manson “a bad dude”).
Researchers are looking for ways to tackle heat islands, develop inventive fuels, and create new construction materials. Big business is taking note and several, even companies such as Wal-Mart and Starbucks, are lending a hand to the ASU program. According to the School of Sustainability itself, the program addresses all of the following:
- Adaptive Solutions to an Urbanizing World
- Sustainable Energy, Materials, and Technology
- Water Quality and Scarcity
- Social and Economic Transformations
- Biodiversity and Habitat Transformations
- Governance and Policy
Much like the new movement toward organic farming programs we wrote about earlier, this is another example of the ways economics, ethics, and education come together to help out communities and capitalism
There is money to be made to help deal with shortages of water, land, petroleum, and other necessary resources, and to do so we need people entering the work force with a 21st century kind of awareness of the American landscape, a landscape that’s changing faster than a cow’s cud into milk.
(Feel free to chew on that last metaphor for a while, along with this ugly pun. My apologies. I couldn’t help myself.)
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