Gators interested in going green now have a new option available.
UF students will be able to major in Sustainability Studies starting Fall semester.
Les Thiele, a political science professor at UF and director of the program, said he began working on this project a number of years back when a couple of students decided they wanted to pursue a minor in sustainability studies.
Thiele said he had both the faculty resources and student support necessary to expand the program to a full-on major.
Students in the sustainability movement are excited about the opportunity to formally study something that they have been working on outside of class, said UF student Ashley Pennington, the outreach coordinator for the Office of Sustainability and a senior completing the sustainability minor.
"It is a great chance to really learn about it as opposed to just trying to practice it on our own," she said.
Other schools like Stony Brook University in New York, University of California at Berkeley and the University of Minnesota have also begun offering similar majors and minors, Thiele said. He is confident that UF's program is unique because of the interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum as well as the development of a set of core courses created specifically for this major.
The program is based out of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, which allows students to explore sustainability from a natural science, social science and humanities perspective.
There are seven courses created specifically for the major, and the faculty is looking to add more courses in the future.
Students can start registering for this major starting Summer B, and there will be no cap on the number of students allowed to register. It is possible for students who are in the minor to use the credits earned to complete the major.
"It's fresh, new and rather original," Thiele said. "It's not like they're going to take it because it's the sort of thing their parents took, so it'll be very interesting to see how new students react."
