SOLS Sustainability
- Overview |
- Education |
- Courses |
- Research |
- Faculty |
- Collaborations
Education
SOLS has a long and distinguished history in sustainability education. For example, our Wildlife Biology program graduated its first student in 1970. This program was unique in its concentration on ecological principles, dynamics of small populations, and endangered species. This evolved to the Conservation Biology major, and in 1991, ASU became the first institution world-wide to offer a dedicated undergraduate degree program in Conservation Biology. The emphasis in the major is now international in scope, and embraces ecological economics, environmental philosophy and policy studies in addition to the core natural science issues related to biodiversity, population biology, conservation genetics and other areas. While the SOLS Conservation Biology program now has over 100 undergraduate students, other majors in SOLS (Biology and Society, Biology, Clinical Lab Sciences, Microbiology, Molecular Biosciences and Biotechnology, and Plant Biology) now also embrace sustainability through interdisciplinary studies, now the hallmark of ASU and SOLS. Many of the 1,500 students with a major in SOLS, as well as 2,000 prehealth students, take courses in areas where sustainability is key, including environmental science and urban ecology, national security in a global context, and global health. Sustainability and the interactions between the environment and human decision-making also play a major role in SOLS´ non-majors courses, such as BIO 100 (The Living World), which includes more than 1,500 students from diverse majors every year. Thus, the total number of students who receive significant sustainability-focused instruction via SOLS faculty corresponds to a substantial percentage of the total undergraduate student population at ASU!
Several student organizations and activities with their roots in SOLS relate well to the sustainability initiative. For example, the editors of the ASU issue of The Triple Helix, the undergraduate journal of science, society and law, are majors in Molecular Biosciences and Biotechnology in SOLS, and the Associated Students in Biotechnology often discuss sustainability-related issues in their meetings.