Creating Sustainable Society
What is Creating Sustainable Society track about?
This track is about life cycle analysis, assessment of the impact of non-renewable and renewable materials. Forest product and green building certification programs, governing standards, and legal issues are addressed in this area.
Where is it used?
Students learn in this track how to assess the sustainability of materials and energy as determined by competing societal interests, explain society’s need and demand for sustainable biomaterials and energy, identify and compare various systems for evaluating sustainable biomaterials, and describe the significant environmental, economic, and social influences on forest management, forest products utilization, and all green natural products.
Hands-on Experience
Students during courses will have first-hand experience working with private companies, non-government organizations, and government agencies to plan for solving real world problems. The program caters to a cross section of students: those who have interests engineering, planning, science, business, renewable energy, biofuels, policy, and design work will all find the tract stimulating and interesting. You will gain skills and confidence in building management plans, innovative products, programs management, and developing strategies that support sustainability.
After you graduate
Graduates will develop and manage sustainability programs at a variety of private firms, government agencies, and non-profit or non-governmental organizations. Our students have been employed in positions across the country and overseas. Several new positions are opening up that support the increased need by companies to develop and implement practices that conserve energy, water, transportation and other resources while making the organization more sustainable.
Shawn Crawford
National Sales Manager
Rainwater Management Solutions
Rainwater harvesting in the U.S. is a growing industry that is still in its infancy. My day-to- day job consists of organizing booths for trade shows, organizing and presenting systems design information to engineering/architectural firms, providing the tools necessary to help our sales representatives succeed, and maintaining project checklists to ensure all jobs are completed on time. I use knowledge gained from my major in Sustainable Biomaterials every day. I use engineering skills to specify and design rainwater capture systems and business skills to help price and promote existing product offerings to ensure we capture more market share.