Environment and Sustainability Management (Minor)
Overview
The Environment and Sustainability Management minor is offered through Parsons School of Design.
This minor enables students to master concepts, frameworks, and tools enabling them to create and deliver value by embedding and centering environmental sustainability in key business, management, and organizational processes. Through a critical and mindful examination of the socio-ecological embeddedness of self, others, and organizations, they learn how to identify organizational stakeholders and their agendas and interests, lead change, and build a better world by creating and fostering environmentally sustainable and responsible businesses, environmental entrepreneurship, and social ventures.
Students apply knowledge from diverse disciplines to analyze complex global business environments and sustainability challenges. This interdisciplinarity prepares students to anticipate, innovate, and create sustainable solutions for businesses, the natural environment, and society by examining and integrating insights from several areas of knowledge. Courses address poverty, inequality, human rights, and justice as well as topics related to the climate crisis, biodiversity, and scarcity of natural resources.
Curriculum
This minor requires successful completion of 18 credits. Students generally select one course from each of the subject areas in the chart below.
Course availability may vary from semester to semester. Some courses may be in development and offered at a later time. Students seeking to pursue alternative coursework in other subject areas to fulfill the minor should consult with their advisors.
Learning Outcomes
A student who has completed this undergraduate minor will be able to demonstrate:
- The ability to critically examine self, organizations, and society from a socio-ecological embeddedness perspective
- Knowledge of foundational concepts related to environmental and social sustainability, such as carrying capacity, cradle-to-grave recycling, sociopolitical adaptation, evolutionary processes, intergenerational debt, climate change, ecosystem services, homeostasis, and social equity and justice and how these concepts can be applied in professional practice and career trajectories
- Knowledge of techniques and skills essential to working with and leading teams across organizational silos and disciplines to manage a multistakeholder environmental and sustainability agenda and approach environmental challenges as innovation
Eligibility
The Environment and Sustainability Management minor is available to undergraduate degree students across The New School.
Students can retroactively apply successfully completed courses toward a minor upon declaring or applying. After a student successfully completes a minor's requirements, the minor will appear on the student's academic transcript at graduation.
For questions about this minor, please contact Latha Poonamallee, chair, at poonamallee@newschool.edu.
Take the Next Step
Contact your Student Success advisor to discuss how a minor will fit with your degree requirements.
Declare or change a minor on my.newschool.edu in the Academics tab.

