University of North Carolina, Greensboro
AC-3: Undergraduate Program

The Environment & Sustainability Program is an interdisciplinary program that fosters understanding of the relationships between human societies and the natural, physical, and biological settings in which life on Earth exists. Our three major degrees (B.A.) integrate perspectives of the natural sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

Students work with diverse faculty and staff from across campus and community (1) to learn how to gather and integrate information about environmental and sustainability problems from multiple disciplines, (2) to think critically about the causes of environmental and sustainability problems, (3) to propose effective solutions and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and (4) to communicate their ideas clearly.

The Environment & Sustainability Program offers three B.A. concentrations: Environmental Studies (emphasizing natural sciences), Sustainability Studies (emphasizing social sciences and humanities), and Environmental & Sustainability Studies (a self-designed major for students with at least a 3.30 GPA as of the junior year). We also offer two minors: Environmental Studies and Sustainability Studies, which are smaller versions of the majors.

The four year BFA is a 120-credit-hour, rigorous, studio intensive course of study designed to teach students to be creative thinkers and makers. Our curriculum is centered on the studio, a physical and intellectual place where ideas are transformed into physical form through continual development of models and drawings. This means drawing and redrawing, making and remaking, critiquing, thinking and rethinking, inventing – in other words, developing different ways of looking at the world and new ways of making it. Required courses include Environmental Design 1-4 and Introduction to Sustainable Design

Sustainability studies focuses on the future while considering carefully what has happened in the past. The Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program's minor builds on the unique definition of sustainability at UNCG, where "Academics, operations, and outreach are conducted with careful attention to the enduring interconnectedness of social equity, the environment, the economy, and aesthetics."

This concentration is designed for students with a strong interest in environmental biology. The concentration provides students with a breadth and depth of environmental awareness, rigorously prepares them for advanced studies in environmental biology and trains them for environmentally-oriented professions.