Flexible Enrollment for the Michigan SEAS Certificate: One Course for Immediate Impact, Four for a World-Class Credential
Complete all four graduate-level courses to earn a recognized credential from the University of Michigan or enroll in a single course to gain a specific technical skill set.
Resilient Ecological Systems: Informed Environmental Assessment and Management
- Why take this course? Understand complex ecological systems to inform high-level strategy in conservation and climate adaptation.
- What you’ll gain: The ability to identify key parts and processes of ecological systems and how they impact a range of applications – risk management, renewable energy siting, ESG reporting, carbon accounting, climate adaptation planning, community-based ecotourism, sustainable yield, restoration, and much more.
Faculty: Sheila Schueller
My background is in finance, and the concepts proved directly relevant to how I think about risk, markets, and decision-making… We learned that organisms have specific performance ranges for environmental conditions, with clear optima and thresholds… Ecology ended up giving me frameworks for evaluating resilience, scalability, and risk, which are core elements of investment logic.
Sustainable Production and Consumption Systems: Tools for a Low-Carbon Circular Economy
- Why take this course? Move beyond surface-level sustainability by learning to evaluate the entire life cycle of products and services from a broad systems perspective, connecting environmental concepts to real-world business decision-making
- What you’ll gain: Mastery in life cycle assessment (LCA) and methods to improve environmental performance and resource efficiency across industrial systems.
Faculty: Ben Goldstein
The most valuable aspects of this course were the way it introduced life cycle thinking in a structured and practical way, and how it helped connect environmental concepts to real-world systems and decision-making. I especially appreciated learning how to evaluate products and processes from a broader systems perspective.
Geographic Information Systems: Spatial Data Analysis and Visualization
- Why take this course? Sustainability challenges happen in specific places. GIS allows you to visualize and solve those spatial problems.
- What you’ll gain: Technical skills in spatial analysis, siting, and risk assessment, with a focus on equity and data visualization, a take-home professional GIS portfolio, and preparation for the GISP® exam, allowing you to become a certified GIS professional.
Faculty: Kim Diver
We made a map layout for almost every lab, and I now have a GIS portfolio which will be so helpful for applying to jobs! I also am a lot more comfortable with raster analysis.
Dynamic Social Systems: Engagement Frameworks for Socio-ecological change
- Why take this course? Technical solutions only work if people and systems adopt them. This course focuses on the “human” side of the sustainability equation.
- What you’ll gain: The ability to apply systems thinking and engagement frameworks for social impact, focusing on power dynamics, governance and human behavior. These will empower your organizational change leadership skills, including managing conflict and building consensus among diverse stakeholders.
Faculty: M’Lis Bartlett
When you address an environmental problem, you don't just give a solution but understand every layer that's connected to that and one of the most important layers in every environmental problem is the social behaviour associated with it…The community engagement and the sense of community related to social change are some of the most valuable aspects of this course.