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Want to find ways of incorporating sustainability into your time here at UWT?
We have several degree/certificate programs that can help you develop a true appreciation for our urban serving campus and its surrounding community.
With our urban campus as a vibrant platform, students don’t just read about sustainability, they make it happen—researching housing alternatives, testing solar arrays, tracking transportation systems, and tending organic gardens. Beyond the classroom, the UWT Sustainability Committee offers opportunities to help students engage with sustainability ideas and efforts on campus.
Course Options:
You can choose a minor in Global Engagement if the social justice side of sustainability is what you're after, or dive right in with a BA in Sustainable Urban Development where you'll learn the core foundation of economic, social, and environmental issues. If science is your calling and your career goals include tackling environmental issues, we have several options in the Environmental Science and Sustainability Program which is part of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences (SIAS).
Whatever your goals might be, we can help you become a leader in the fight for a more sustainable world! Explore these degree offerings in more detail below.
Sustainability Oriented Majors
arrow_drop_down_circle Find Majors that will help you find a career in Sustainbility.
Sustainability Majors
In reality, any major can be sustainability oriented. It is the responsibility of the student to pick a major that they are interested in and pick courses within the major to contribute to their Sustainability knowledge.
Sustainability-Focused Majors
These majors are specified so a person can jump into a Sustainability-specific career.
BS Environmental Sustainability - prepares students to understand, analyze, and solve environmental and sustainability challenges. Interdisciplinary foundations in environmental sciences, including natural and social sciences, combine with training in communications, writing, law, critical perspectives, and emerging sustainability science. Students can choose one of four options for in-depth study.
- Environmental Policy and Law
- Environmental Communication
- Business/Nonprofit Environmental Sustainability
- Pre-Environmental Education
BS Environmental Science - provides students with a strong science background with a focus on the environmental issues of the future. Through lecture, lab and field classes, you will get hands-on experience with biology, chemistry, the geosciences, physics and math.
BA Sustainable Urban Development - As one of the first such degrees in the nation, students will be prepared to address recent initiatives that have called for a significant “greening” of urban development, both locally and internationally.
BA Urban Studies - The School of Urban Studies offers a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies with two formal options: Community Development & Planning and GIS & Spatial Planning. The degree starts with an introduction into the discipline of urban studies with course topics on exploring cities, world development, and urban studies "in practice".
BS Urban Design - The School of Urban Studies has created the first undergraduate urban design degree on the west coast. While architecture focuses on the design of individual buildings, urban design operates on a larger scale – envisioning new ways of designing public spaces like parks, streets, groups of buildings, whole neighborhoods, and entire cities.
BA Social Welfare - The Social Welfare major is dedicated to preparing competent, ethical, and culturally sensitive social workers with specialized knowledge and skills who are committed to evidence-based practice and to planned social change.
BA Education- Quality education is one of the most important aspects of global sustainable development. Unique aspects of this program are the explicit integration of anti-racist, decolonizing, equity-centric, and inclusive pedagogies and practices, as well as partnering with communities, families/guardians, and school personnel to support a culturally responsive, holistic, and rigorous education for diverse learners.
Many of our Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences degrees relate strongly to the issues of social and environmental justice that must be addressed to move sustainable development forward. These degrees in particular are aligned with the values of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals - BA Writing Studies: Rhetoric, Writing and Social Change; BA Ethnic, Gender and Labor Studies; BA History: Arts, Culture and Society; Global History; Labor and Social Movements; Power, Gender and Identity Option; or Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
Sustainability-Inclusive Majors
These majors are focused on subjects other than sustainability but have sustainability-focused learning requirements. People in these fields can advance sustainable practices and policies. These majors also offer courses specific to sustainability.
BS Civil Engineering - emphasizes the conception, development, design, construction, maintenance, and renewal of systems in a complex urban environment that involve issues in transportation, water resources, the environment, structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, construction engineering, and land development.
BA Urban Studies – Community Development and Planning - Examines the production and development of cities from different community perspectives and teaches how cities are planned and built, and the power dynamics that influence inclusion and exclusion from urban spaces and political processes.
BS Biomedical Sciences - The BS in Biomedical Sciences immerses students in an exploration of topics in the life sciences, including cell biology, genetics, microbiology, molecular biology, neurobiology and physiology, as they are applied to the science of human health.
BA Business Administration - This degree program is designed to prepare students for entry into professional positions in business and government. The curriculum emphasizes critical learning outcomes needed to succeed in the business environment of the 21st century.
BA Communication - The diverse range of courses in the major encourage the development of important skills related to critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication.
BA Law and Policy - Students in this major develop a deep appreciation for the complex relationships between law, society, culture and politics.
BA in Criminal Justice - The curriculum provides a theoretical understanding of the discipline, combined with an understanding of the scientific method as it applies to criminal justice.
BA Politics, Philosophy and Economics: International Studies - Students gain the background knowledge and skills necessary to understand the sources of conflict, cooperation and peace in the global arena.
BA Psychology - These courses focus on human diversity and contemporary cultural issues while advanced courses integrate traditional psychology education with applied topics that emphasize the intersectionality of Psychology with different approaches to understanding and working with social problems
BA Spanish Language and Cultures - Students in the Spanish Language and Cultures major develop language skills and the cultural competence needed to compete in an increasingly diverse world.
Minors/Certificates
arrow_drop_down_circle Minors & Certificates
Sustainability Minors & Certifications
Obtaining a Minor in a sustainability field is a great way to include the principles of sustainability into your chosen field. Whether you are a business major or science major, pursing a minor or certificate in these programs can expand your skill set to incite sustainable changes in your field.
Sustainability-Focused Minors
If you are looking to add sustainability skills to your current major, these minors would be beneficial for all majors within the UWT. However, please discuss adding a minor with a academic advisor.
Minor in Sustainability - This minor gives you grounding in sustainability practice and theory and creates a foundational understanding of local and global problems from a social, economic and environmental perspective.
Minor in Global Engagement - This minor connects students to the places and communities they are studying through community-engaged seminars. The Minor in Global Engagement is open to all UW Tacoma students.
Minor in Sustainable Urban Development - Students will learn principles that include the necessity to consider social justice, environmental, end economic outcomes as parts of the sustainability matrix; the tensions, complementarities, and tradeoffs among these dimensions; and the role that urban/suburban growth and form play in furthering this multi-dimensional concept of sustainability.
Minor in Urban Studies - Exposes the complexity of everyday life in metropolitan areas. Explores how the various disciplines of sociology, anthropology, geography, economies, and political science have studied and made sense of cities. Special attention given to issues of class, race, and gender.
Minor in Environmental Studies - This minor will also be helpful for Urban Studies majors interested in restoration projects in urban areas or how populations affect the environment, Business majors needing a background in the growing fields of "green" marketing and manufacturing or environmental management, Nursing majors interested in environmental health, Students going into teaching programs, Concerned citizens interested in learning more about environmental issues.
Health & Society Minor - The Health and Society minor offers students the opportunity to increase their understanding of, and advocacy for, health within a broad social context.
Minor in Business Administration - This minor teaches students to recognize the social, political, ethical, and environmental consequences of management decisions.
Minor in Sports Enterprise Management - Enables students to discover evidence and determine actions to be taken to support the activities of for-profit and not-for-profit sports enterprises.
Many of our Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences minors relate strongly to the issues of social and environmental justice that must be addressed to move sustainable development forward. These minors in particular are aligned with the values of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals: Teaching, Learning and Justice Minor; Gender and Sexuality Studies Minor; Education and Community Engagement Minor.
Sustainability-Inclusive Minors
The minors listed below, would complement a Sustainability Major and focus your degree to a specific career or field. Please discuss if these minors are right for you with an academic advisor.
Minor in Innovation and Design - equips students with ways of thinking, creating, and intervening in problems in the world in a way that invites collaboration and ethically engages communities.
American Popular Cultures Minor - The courses focus on the study of technologies and material culture, production of popular culture, consumption practices and the role of popular culture in creating and disseminating ideologies.
Latino Studies Minor - prepares students to understand the social worlds they inhabit and think critically about the diversity of Latin American cultures, history and politics that inform contemporary U.S. Latino cultural practices and social formations.
American Indian Studies Minor - develop an increased awareness of their own culture and the cultures of Indigenous peoples, will learn to identify and articulate critical questions and approaches that respect and utilize Indigenous paradigms and the common theoretical assumptions of Indigenous cultures
Human Rights Minor - The Human Rights minor is an option for students who are interested in this rapidly emerging field of study. This is a coordinated tri-campus initiative (UW Tacoma, UW Seattle and UW Bothell) and students are encouraged, but are not required, to take courses from more than one campus to earn the minor.
Law and Policy Minor - The Law and Policy minor invites students to engage with a variety of different perspectives on the social and legal problems facing societies on local, state, national and global levels. Students develop a deep appreciation for the complex relationships between law, society, culture and politics.
Sociology Minor - Learn to think deeply about current social problems, issues of social difference, structures of social institutions and more generally about inequality and power in society.
