Global Sustainable Development

Our innovative transdisciplinary courses in Global Sustainable Development (GSD) in the School for Cross-Faculty Studies provide opportunities for students to go beyond disciplinary boundaries, creating new knowledge about the world we live in.

At undergraduate level, we offer a single honours BASc degree and a range of joint honours BASc degrees, challenging students to think critically about some of the most pressing problems facing our planet today.

New postgraduate programmes

Our new postgraduate programmes in GSD create intellectual foundations not just for talking about the problems we face, but for taking action to help solve them. Students enrolled on our MASc degree will combine academic learning with practical application to tackle problems of global sustainable development. On our PhD programme, researchers will bridge different disciplines and connect to real-world challenges, addressing perspectives outside of academia too.

Connecting different perspectives

Our transdisciplinary courses offer the chance for students to connect different perspectives about ways to address societal goals within one course. Students benefit from access to Warwick’s research-intensive environment, giving them a chance to learn from world-experts. Sustainability is being researched across many disciplines in the University - energy, agriculture, economy, finance, transport, urban science, environment, policy, education, materials, manufacturing and technology - and course modules are designed alongside these research interests.

Warwick Business School

In 2020, Warwick Business School (WBS) placed second in the Canadian clean capitalism magazine Corporate Knights 2020 Better World MBA Ranking, due to its emphasis on sustainability and responsible business education. Warwick Business School’s MBA programmes integrate environment, sustainability and governance within its modules, such as Managing in a New World, which tackles the transition to low carbon economies, while Organisational Behaviour addresses the social responsibility of business in the age of climate change.

WMG

WMG at the University of Warwick offers courses on sustainable manufacturing and engineering, such as the MSc in Sustainable Automotive Electrification, which focuses on developing the skills to design and evaluate the next generation of automotive products that have a lower environmental impact than conventional vehicles. Within the context of environmental legislation and consumer expectations for vehicle quality, reliability, and performance, students learn to assess the different technology options and methods for design, system integration, and verification that will drive the market introduction of new energy efficient vehicles.

As well as courses that are explicitly designed to support sustainable development, sustainability is included in the curriculum across many departments including the School of Law, School of Engineering, the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Social Sciences to name just a few.

Economics

The module, Introduction to Environmental Economics from the Department of Economics, covers how economic activity and policy affect the environment in which we live. Contemporary environmental problems, such as climate change, sustainable development and transboundary pollution are discussed.

Looking to the future

Warwick will further embed sustainability in the curriculum to ensure the effects are truly transformative and enriching – for our students and their impact on society.