Environmental Sustainability and Resilience Bachelor of Arts

The information on this page pertains to requirements for students who matriculated in the current academic year. Students who matriculated in a prior year should view historical catalog information here.

Program Overview

Drake's Environmental Sustainability and Resilience major is a highly interdisciplinary program enabling graduates to address sustainability and resilience challenges in a variety of fields. Sustainable systems are those that can continue their core functions indefinitely without degradation; resilient systems are those that can continue their core functions in the face of rapid, and often unexpected, change.

Creating sustainable and resilient systems requires that practitioners incorporate ecological, economic, and social principles in their work, and that they be familiar with both rigorously quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. Therefore, our majors will develop a strong background in environmental sciences sociology, economics, communication, consensus-building, and other relevant areas. They also will develop skills in systems analysis, carbon footprinting, and Geographic Information Systems that will prepare them to engage in identifying issues and developing solutions to diverse challenges upon graduation.

Because each student's path and interests are unique, the sustainability and resilience curriculum is organized around four key outcomes for majors:

  1. Choice Analysis - Students will be able to identify, analyze, and communicate the impacts of collective and individual choices on environmental, economic, and social systems.
  2. Systems Thinking - Students will employ whole-systems thinking to understand the nature of sustainability and resilience challenges and to design successful responses.
  3. Stakeholder Engagement - Students will develop appropriate skills for communicating among various constituencies that have a stake in sustainability and resilience choices, and be able to integrate concerns from multiple perspectives into proposed solutions that are appropriate to local political, social, and economic conditions.
  4. Professional Skills - Students will develop the skills necessary for employment or graduate study in fields related to Environmental Sustainability and Resilience.