Sustainability Design and Technology majors are architects for change. They see the rise in need for renewable energy as exciting, challenging, and addressable. They are both conceptual and technically inclined. They like to draw, debate, and use power tools. They wear work boots and overalls in the morning and clean-pressed shirts for presentations in the afternoon.

Sustainability Design and Technology majors ask difficult questions, explore multiple answers and can explain, in everyday terms, the best solutions. They travel, they hike, they go to meetings, and they build—turbines, towers, solar panels and rain recovery systems. They work on creating greener communities every day, and believe it is mandatory that the world wean itself from its over-dependence on fossil fuels.

Is this you?
Do you want to measure the wind? Raise a barn? Do you like heights? Would you drive five hours to present a preliminary wind plan at a county meeting? Do you follow climate change policy? Are you okay with being outdoors in five below zero? Could you explain to a ten-year-old how a windmill works? Do you always know where North is? Are you good with maps and numbers?

If yes, a Sustainability Design and Technology major is for you.

What you’ll study
In addition to practical skills and core biology and physics courses, your studies will include:

• Economics of Resource Conservation and Sustainability
• Energy and Efficiency
• Sustainable Societies

Complete Program Requirements

What you’ll do
Your projects may include:

• Building solar panels, anemometers and wind turbines
• Measuring the wind for a feasibility study
• Interviewing local townspeople and businesses to establish a preliminary community wind plan
• Building a solar-powered barn
• Researching domestic and foreign energy policies
• Writing technical reports on effectiveness of existing wind systems

Who will teach you

Lois K. Ongley Professor of Chemistry Everyone is focused on the environment in one way or another.	Kevin Spigel  Assistant Professor of GeoScience	Mick Womersley Associate Professor of Human Ecology Nature bats last.

Where your Major can take you

Sustainability Design and Technology graduates typically go on to become:

Explore a Career in Sustainability Design and Technology