Sustainability and Development

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015 seek to address the greatest challenges humanity faces: poverty, inequality, hunger, climate change, pandemics and diseases, and ecosystem and biodiversity losses. The Sustainability and Development (SusDev) specialization at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) helps you understand, analyze, and address these global challenges.

Social and environmental well-being depends on our collective ability to achieve and go beyond the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. To effectively meet environment and sustainability challenges, students need to identify decision-making priorities, and design feasible interventions, that consider the key synergies and tradeoffs among sustainable development goals.

With the Sustainability and Development specialization, SEAS offers one of the best sustainable development master's programs in the country and across the globe that trains students to achieve the SDGs and their relationship to the environment and sustainability—and indeed to think beyond them.

In the Fall 2021 term, Sustainability and Development became available to all students as their only specialization, or as a second specialization. For additional information about this master's degree in sustainability and the online Sustainability and Development MasterTrack certificate, check out the full story about the specialization and review these SusDev FAQs.

WHY SUSTAINABILITY AND DEVELOPMENT?

By completing the Sustainability and Development specialization, you become uniquely prepared to meet the rapidly growing need for trained professionals and researchers across the spectrum of sustainability and development sectors at local, national, and global scales.

With an in-depth focus on understanding the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals—which increasing numbers of global organizations and governments have adopted—the SusDev specialization helps you:

• Develop expertise in conceptual and theoretical issues associated with sustainability and development 
• Understand the real-world practices that have helped improve the core areas of well-being and have supported major sustainability transitions through new institutions, policies, and behaviors
• Learn the methods and skills necessary to implement new visions and practices for greater sustainability and well-being*

CURRICULUM

The Sustainability and Development specialization emphasizes collaboration across multiple disciplines, from the social and ecological sciences to engineering, public health, policy, education, and business.

Sustainability and Development Specialization Skills

• Impact evaluation
• Program evaluation
• Project management
• Cost-benefit analysis
• Institutional analysis
• Life cycle analysis
• Gender analysis
• Sustainable intensification
• Negotiations
• Conflict management
• Transition management
• Adaptation and transformation
• Environmental and resource governance

CAREERS AND SELECT EMPLOYERS

Expected careers in sustainability for students who graduate with a master's degree in sustainability include those in government in and outside the United States (local, state, and federal levels), nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, small companies and large corporations, think tanks and policy centers, management and consulting firms, and international and domestic civil society organizations. Sustainability and Development provides you with information about potential careers in these sectors, and helps you to prepare for the job market.