By Mark Ciotola

Sustainability encompasses many disciplines. It requires a broad, holistic, interdisciplinary mindset. There are several courses on Corsbook of particular importance to sustainability.

Energy, and its expression to real life processes, is the common denominator of life. Energy and Thermodynamics introduces concepts of energy and thermodynamics and shows how they apply to industrial processes. Sustainability takes place on the Earth, so an understanding of the planetary sciences are essential. Earth Sciences and Ecology introduces concepts about geology, oceanography and meteorology, and introduces ecology. Big Sustainability then applies the science to human psychology and the perspectives of the big and small to address sustainability challenges.

There are also courses on the social sciences and technologies to help understand human society and sustainability challenges, as well as to construct more scientifically feasible, psychologically robust solutions.

 

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