This course provides the scaffolding for a semester long interdisciplinary team project and facilitates completion of reflective portfolios. Students apply knowledge and sustainability competencies to a challenge identified by a business, nonprofit or government agency, while developing professional skills to prepare for the transition to a career or graduate school.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Graduate students must meet all requirements plus an additional leadership or research component.
Athena Title
Sustainability Capstone
Non-Traditional Format
Internship/application project.
Undergraduate Pre or Corequisite
SUST 4200/6200
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall and spring
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Students will demonstrate the application of Sustainability Certificate learning and the 7 Core Competencies through the planning and implementation of a team sustainability capstone project, while honing professional sustainability skills, and crafting a professional portfolio reflecting on learning and personal growth throughout the Certificate.
Students will demonstrate the application of Systems Thinking Competency; the ability to recognize and understand relationships; to analyze complex systems, including their social, environmental, and economic components, to evaluate how systems are embedded within different domains and scales; and to deal with uncertainty when making decisions.
Students will demonstrate the application of Anticipatory Competency; the ability to understand and evaluate multiple futures-possible, probable and desirable; to create their own vision of the future; to apply the precautionary principle; to assess the consequences of action; to deal with risk and change.
Students will demonstrate the application of Normative Competency; the ability to understand and reflect on the norms and values that underlie their actions; and to negotiate sustainability values, principles, goals, and targets, in a context of conflicts of interests and trade-offs, uncertain knowledge and contradictions. Students will also be able to reflect on their own role in the local community and global society; to continually evaluate one’s actions; and deal with one’s feelings and desires.
Students will demonstrate the application of Strategic Competency; the ability to collectively develop and implement innovative actions that further sustainability at the local level and further afield.
Students will demonstrate the application of Collaboration competency; the ability to motivate, enable, and facilitate collaborative processes for sustainability problem solving. This includes the ability; to understand and respect the needs, perspectives and actions of others (empathy); to understand, relate to, and be sensitive to others (empathetic leadership); understand roles within a group, deal with conflicts, and maintain flexibility and adaptability in doing what is necessary / taking on roles to accomplish shared goals.
Students will demonstrate the application of Intrapersonal Competency; the ability to regulate one’s own emotions, desires, thoughts and behaviors as well as one’s positionality and role in global society and local community. Acting with self-awareness, and regulating, motivating, and continually evaluating one’s actions to improve oneself, drawing on and developing emotional intelligence and resilience.
Students will demonstrate the application of Integrative Problem Solving Competency; The ability to apply different problem-solving frameworks to complex sustainability problems and develop viable, inclusive, and equitable solutions that promote sustainable development, integrating the other competencies.
Topical Outline
Collaboration and Normative competencies: Working with Teams, Project Partners, and Stakeholders
Strategic and Anticipatory Competencies: Project Management: Goals, Deliverables, Tasks, Timelines, and Assessment
Systems and Integrative Problem Solving Competencies: Systems Mapping and Research
Inter/Intrapersonal Competency: Project Implementation, Professional Development, and Critical Reflection
