Sustainability and the Urban Environment, Master of Science (M.S.)

Program and Objectives

Sustainability in the Urban Environment Program (Program Director - Professor Kyle McDonald)

This innovative, interdisciplinary program draws upon emerging approaches in each of the disciplines of architecture, engineering science, and the social sciences, and prepares students for the burgeoning field of sustainability.  The program's goal is to train current, emerging and next-generation professionals to solve pressing local, regional and global sustainability problems.  The curriculum is designed to prepare students to plan and implement strategies for sustainable development of buildings, open spaces and infrastructure, energy, water resources, air quality, land use, waste management, transportation, urban planning and construction.  The curriculum enables students to acquire experience in interdisciplinary analyses of advanced concepts, principles and methodologies for solving a wide range of challenging sustainability problems. Graduates are trained to work in diverse professional settings involving collaboration, interaction and communication with teams of scientists, engineers, architects among others.

The interdisciplinary Master's degree program is geared to applicants with a bachelor's degree in architecture, engineering, science, or the social sciences from an accredited US college or university. Applicants with degrees in other fields may qualify for admission or conditional admission to the program depending on their experience, with conditional acceptances typically requiring passing an open source physics course prior to matriculation. International applications are welcome with transcript translation and verification of degree equivalency. Courses are taught by the faculties of The Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, The Grove School of Engineering, the Division of Science, and the Colin L. Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership.

Each candidate for a master's degree must complete at least 30 credits: 18 in the Core Curriculum, and 12 from a diverse collection of Architecture, Engineering, Science, and Social Sciences elective courses. The core includes a key sequence of courses across the Program’s divisions and the year-long Capstone Interdisciplinary Team Project (I and II)  and a capstone project conducted in a diverse teaming environment with teams  addressing real-world sustainability problems.