The clean economy is growing rapidly, but clean-economy employers are demanding highly skilled innovators, according to a recent Brookings Institution report.(1) Our changing world doesn’t have neat little problems to solve; it has big messy dilemmas, to which there aren’t easy answers. Graduates entering this job market will need to be fluent in many disciplines and know how to broker knowledge from many sources.

At Unity College, every student, regardless of major, is trained in a radical new approach to environmental problem-solving: Sustainability Science.

Sustainability Science is an emerging field that gives environmental professionals a broad, action-oriented framework for addressing urgent challenges.

As America’s Environmental College, Unity has never been afraid to lead. Tomorrow’s environmental leaders must take an integrated approach to complex problems. Sustainability Science provides this integrated, or transdisciplinary, approach, using tools and information from many different disciplines to devise real-world, comprehensive solutions.

Sustainability Science builds upon the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities, to link knowledge with practice. Our faculty members help students journey to the edge of contemporary environmental thought, focusing on the central questions about how humans should use the earth.

Sustainability Science prepares students for a marketplace that is desperate for effective environmental professionals. Whether pursuing a career in environmental communications, wildlife biology, or conservation law enforcement, Unity graduates are prepared to consider all of the angles—and to work collaboratively to address converging crises.

1 Mark Muro, Jonathan Rothwell, and Devashree Saha, Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2011), 7.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012