New Course Offering...

Introduction to Sustainability
Instructor: William Stigliani
MWF, 2:00, ITC 7

(pdf)

Description: This course is an introduction to sustainability, providing a broad overview of challenges posed by environmental degradation and resource depletion, and potential ways societies can respond to ensure that these problems are not left for future generations to solve. The course will explore the multi-faceted dimensions of sustainability as a web of interactions between the environment, technology, economy, and society.  The course will be solution-oriented, surveying the numerous options put forward as pathways toward sustainability.  Students will be required to partake in service projects that promote local sustainability in the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area.

Course Content:

Dimensions, importance, and goals of sustainability

Challenges to achieving sustainability

• Global environmental changes
• Climate change
• Species extinction
• Soil and ocean degradation
• Temporal and spatial scales
• Social, economic, and political systems
• Wasteful life styles
• GDP driven economy
• Who cares for future generations?
• Lack of international cooperation

Toward solutions

• Managing for sustainability
• Ecosystem services
• Mimicking nature
• Natural capitalism
• Adaptation strategies
• Sustainable technologies
• Renewable energy systems
• Radical increases in efficiency
• Zero-waste systems
• Sustainable policies
• Incentivizing transition to sustainability
• Global governance of global changes
• Instruments to protect future generations

Holistic interpretation: harmonizing the biosphere and the human sphere

Industrial Technology Center, University of Northern Iowa, 2900 Campus Drive, Cedar Falls, Iowa, 50614-0178 • Phone: 39-273-2561, Fax: 319-273-5818
Updated 2007 - About this site