Fundamentals of Sustainability, a course offered through the Penn Organizational Dynamics Programs, provides students with a broad and deep introduction to sustainability concepts and challenges through the lens of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs).
Throughout the course, students review case studies highlighting scalable sustainability practices and examples of organizational leadership for sustainability while also engaging directly with several global thought leaders. Student teams conduct research on a sustainability issue and discuss challenges to UN-SDGs, propose solutions, and explore global, national, and local impacts of positive progress toward goal achievement.
In fall 2024, student teams examined chosen sustainability issues and developed blog posts covering three key sustainability topics: Zero Hunger, timber-based construction, and renewable energy for data centers in the era of AI.
- From Kenya to Philadelphia: How Timber Construction Can Help Mitigate Climate Change - PDF
Dorothy Thomas, Stephanie Shapiro, and Zachary Cherny explored social innovation in the Global South with a focus on the sustainability benefits of timber construction. Timber, they learned, is a sustainable building material that has lower carbon emissions than steel and concrete. Looking locally for recent examples of mass timber construction, the students found that a contemporary building on Penn’s campus, Amy Gutmann Hall, used timber as a main construction component. - Born to Live, Not Just Survive: Why Zero (Hunger) Matters Most? - PDF
According to the recent Global Report on Food Crises, 733 million people across the globe were undernourished in 2023. Investigating SDG 2, Zero Hunger in their blog post, students Akanksha Sunil Jumde and Lechen Wang discuss how hunger is made worse by the climate crisis, economic instability, and regional conflicts. The blog shares ways to address hunger and build healthy, resilient societies, drawing a connection between human development and human dignity. - Digital Clouds, Clean Skies: Balancing Bytes and Carbon in the Renewable Data Center Revolution - PDF
Data centers use 1-2% of the world’s electricity and will continue to consume more as digital services grow. In their blog post, Mingli Qi and Daniel van Rooyen address the consequences of data processing energy costs—particularly energy-hungry AI development—and explore if and how we can power our data centers responsibly with clean energy solutions.
Read more about other projects developed for this course:
The Foundations of Sustainability course is offered to students enrolled in the Master of Science in Organizational Dynamics, Master of Environmental Studies, and Master of Science in Applied Geosciences programs. Read more about the course Fundamentals of Sustainability >
