AGSY 310 - Principles of Sustainability

Credits: 5
LEC hours per week: 5
This course introduces students to the theory, principles, and practices of sustainability. It includes discussions on strategies for overcoming problems in order to establish or maintain ecological and environmental health, create economic welfare, and ensure social justice. Students will examine our relationships to technology, natural resources, natural science, and human development at a local-to-global scale. Formerly: SAS 310.
Course Outcomes:

Define sustainability and identify the key characteristics and relationships of human and natural systems as they pertain to sustainability.
Identify stakeholders and analyze the systems and challenges that connect them.
Analyze and discuss the different and divergent cultural and disciplinary perspectives of sustainability and key challenges to achieving sustainability at local, regional and global scales.
Use indicators and other tools to identify, measure and assess individual and collective sustainability actions.
Propose and defend a viable solution to a particular challenge to sustainability in one’s specific field of interest and create a persuasive proposal that advocates this solution.

Course Topics:

Origins of sustainability
Environmental, social and economic components of sustainability
Standards of sustainability
Scales of systems
Measuring sustainability
Challenges to sustainability
Sustainability policy