Fifteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

The work of transforming our communities, our businesses, and ourselves toward more sustainability requires practitioners to, in a sense, live and work in two worlds at the same time: the world of the present and the world of the potential future. Education programs that prepare sustainability professionals need to emphasize both the practical and the visionary. Practitioners need to simultaneously work on reducing unsustainability while aiming to build the more sustainable world that we desire, recognizing that work to reduce unsustainability might slow down progress toward sustainability. To be competent in this arena, sustainability professionals need to develop translational skill sets that that allow them to bridge across disciplines, issues, time scales, and realities in ways that help society transition to more authentic and necessary sustainability while working on day-to-day realities. This requires attention in the development of a curriculum. This paper examines one US-based Master’s degree program in Sustainability Studies to explore strategies and challenges for preparing sustainability professionals with these skill sets and sensibilities in mind.