Center for Sustainability Studies
The Center for Sustainability Studies (CSS) was created at Kean University in 2011. It represents Kean University’s expanding commitment to transforming lives by providing world-class education. The mission of the CSS is to provide students with an extraordinary educational experience necessary to understand and confront contemporary issues best examined and addressed by sustainability sciences.
The B.S. in Sustainability Science, the only degree of its kind in New Jersey and one of only a dozen degree programs in the nation with such a focus. The mission of this program is to prepare students in the emerging discipline of sustainability science that focuses in three main areas: environment, economy, and society. It is designed to prepare students to understand four specific questions:
- What are the unique characteristics of Earth that have allowed life to develop and to flourish?
- What specific human actions are compromising these unique characteristics?
- Why are these human actions occurring?
- With an understanding of 1, 2, and 3 (above), what corrective actions are necessary?
“Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources…. A great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required.” (Reference: World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity signed by over 1,700 scientists, 1992)
The Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health warned in 2000 that “in the past decade in every environmental sector, conditions have either failed to improve, or they are worsening….”
In 2005, nearly 1,400 scientists from 95 countries wrote in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, “Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history.”
The time to begin that great change is now.
For a complete list of course descriptions and degree requirements, click here.
