Sustainability Courses

Fall 2023  |  Introduces the carbon cycle and "climate solutions" + provides specialized knowledge to manage and offset carbon emissions for government entities and large corporations through nature-based solutions and technology.

• Faculty: C Terrer
• MW1-2.30 + Lab: F2-4 

Fall 2024 | Develops environmental accounting tools including energy, carbon, materials, land use, and possibly others, from small scales (e.g., products and processes) to larger scales, (e.g., companies, nations and global) to reveal how reoccurring human behavior patterns have dominated environmental outcomes. Involves visiting experts and readings in areas such as ethics, economics, governance, and development to frame core issues in human relationship to the environment and future societies. Explores how local actions, including engineering interventions and behavior change, play out at larger scales associated with the concept of sustainability, and how local actions may be modified to realize sustainability. Class is participatory and includes an exploratory project. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 25.

• Faculty: T. Gutowski
• MW 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Spring 2024 | Students learn to leverage heterogeneous data from urban services, cities, and the environment, and apply machine learning methods to evaluate and/or improve sustainability solutions.

• Professor: S. Amin
• F 11:00 AM, F 12:00PM

Fall 2024 |  Seminar series on current research on energy systems modeling and analysis.

• Faculty: R. C. Armstrong
• T 12:30 - 2:30 PM

Spring 2024 | Builds insight and skills about multi-party negotiation and consensus building. Relevant to all multi-sectoral work.

• Faculty: Susskind
• Th 3:30-5:30PM

Fall 2024 | H1 Environmental justice and climate change are pressing contemporary concerns. Crucial dimensions of the exposure of households to environmental harms and benefits are determined by land use and environmental laws. Land use and environmental laws are also central to reducing carbon emissions and building environmentally sustainable and resilient communities. Introduces students to the legal and social science dimension of these two crucial areas of law that is well-covered in the current curriculum. Enrollment limited to 30.

• Faculty: J. Steil
• T TH 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Spring 2024 | Designed for students who wish to gain deep insights into the tension and synergy between sustainability and the real estate industry.

• Faculty: Palacios
• Th 9:00AM - 10:30AM, W 6:30PM - 8:00PM

Fall 2023 | Assessment of current and potential future energy systems. Covers resources, extraction, conversion, and end-use technologies, with emphasis on meeting 21st-century regional and global energy needs in a sustainable manner.

• Faculty: Golay, Friedberg

Spring 2024 | Focuses on disseminating Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) innovations in low-income countries and underserved communities worldwide. Structured around project-based learning, lectures, discussions, and student-led tutorials. Emphasizes core WASH principles, appropriate and sustainable technologies at household and community scales, urban challenges worldwide, culture-specific solutions, lessons from start-ups, collaborative partnerships, and social marketing. Mentored term project entails finding and implementing a viable solution focused on education/training; a technology, policy or plan; a marketing approach; and/or behavior change. Guest lecturers present case studies, emphasizing those developed and disseminated by MIT faculty, practitioners, students, and alumni. Field trips scheduled during class time, with optional field trips on weekends.  Limited to 20. 

• Faculty: S. E. Murcott, S. L. Hsu
• T 12:00PM - 3:00PM

Fall 2024 | Examines key issues in the current and future development of urban energy systems, such as technology, use, behavior, regulation, climate change, and lack of access or energy poverty.

• Faculty: M. Harkavy
• M 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Fall 2024 | Examines the tensions and potential synergies among traditional transportation policy values of individual mobility, system efficiency and “sustainability”

• Faculty: J. Aloisi

• F 2:00 - 5:00 PM

Spring 2024 | Presents methods for resolving facility siting disputes, particularly those involving renewable energy. After completing four modules and a competency exam for MITx certification, students work in teams to help client communities in various cities around the United States. Through direct interactions with the proponents and opponents of facilities subject to local opposition, students complete a stakeholder assessment and offer joint fact-finding and collaborative problem-solving assistance. The political, legal, financial, and regulatory aspects of facility siting, particularly for renewable energy, are reviewed along with key infrastructure planning principles. Students taking the graduate version complete additional assignments.

• Faculty: L. Susskind, J. Chun
• F 3:00PM - 5:00PM

Fall 2024 | Studies interactions between planners and institutions at different scales, from local to global/transnational. Emphasizes historical and institutional approaches to development planning.

• B. Rajagopal
• T, Th 2:30 - 4:00 pm

Fall 2024 | Urban analytics draws upon statistics, visualization, and computation to better understand and ultimately shape cities. This course emphasizes telling stories about cities and neighborhoods covering a set of fundamental concepts of descriptive approaches, quantitative and spatial analysis in R, and principles of reproducible data analysis. Students learn to communicate the results of visualization and analysis for use in decision-making and policy development and to critique those processes.

• Faculty: Cong
• MW 10:00 - 11:30 AM

Fall 2023 | Will teach you how to evaluate a development project and practice socially responsible real estate yourself by applying SIA, EIA, and consultation methods.

• Faculty: Susskind
• T Th - 12:30

Spring 2024 | Studies the basic principles of techniques for reconstructing the history of ocean climate from marine sediment cores, corals, ice cores, and other paleoclimate archives. Examines this data in the light of proposed climate change mechanisms. Micropaleontological, isotopic, geochemical, and mineralogical changes are used to infer changes in seawater composition, atmospheric chemistry, and climate. Observations are interpreted as consequences of changes in ocean temperature, circulation, and chemistry, and are used to evaluate theories proposed to account for glacial/interglacial cycles. Focuses on the past two million years, but major processes and events from the past 100 million years are also included.

• Faculty: E. Boyle
• MWF 2:00PM

Fall 2024 | Pre-Req Permission of Instructor Explores climate variability and change, focusing on the atmosphere and ocean, while building experience applying diagnostic analyses to a range of modern observations and models. Provides practical insight, from regional to global scale, with applications to past and future climates. Emphasizes salient features of the mean climate system and modes of natural variability, as well as observed and projected manifestations of anthropogenic climate change. Students gain experience accessing, analyzing, and visualizing a wide range of gridded observational-based datasets, as well as output from global climate model simulations. Develops the tools necessary to apply climate diagnostic analysis to one's own research, as well as the interdisciplinary edge to critically assess and interpret the observational and model results underpinning the Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

• Faculty: C. Ummenhofer, A. Gonzalez
• T TH 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

Fall 2024 | Examines the role of science in US and international environmental policymaking.

• Faculty: Solomon, Knox-Hayes
• F 2:00-5:00 pm

Spring 2025 | 15.012 (fall) 15.014 (spring) establishes understanding of the development processes of societies and economies. Studies several dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, political, institutional, economy, organizational, relational, and personal) and the balance among them. Explores the basics of governmental intervention, focusing on areas such as the judicial system, environment, social security, and health. Builds skills to determine what type of policy is most appropriate. Considers implications of new technologies on the financial sector: internationalization of currencies, mobile payment systems, and cryptocurrencies. Discusses the institutional framework to ensure choices are sustainable across all dimensions and applications.

• Faculty: R. Rigobon, A. Makarin
• MW 8:30AM-10:00 AM

Spring 2025 | Concentrates on debates about current policy challenges. Students debate and vote on policy actions on current issues in developed and developing nations. Subjects include industrial policy, macroeconomics, poverty, social safety net, labor practices, immigration and labor markets, international economics, human rights, civil rights, democracy, environmental policy, regulation, and crypto assets. Topics change from year to year.

• Faculty: R. Rigobon
• W 4:00PM - 7:00PM

Spring 2025 | Explores how energy markets function, what changes as the world decarbonizes, and the role of new technologies in this change. Examines how market outcomes are influenced by policies, with a focus on environmental policies. Uses economic tools to analyze efficiency and public policy challenges in interconnected energy and environmental markets. Topics include how electricity markets are shaped by large-scale renewable penetration, how decarbonization policies affect different regions and socio-economic groups, measuring the social costs of climate change, and the role of critical minerals in a decarbonizing world. Students gain experience in linking theory to real-world policy problems, particularly through a team-based electricity market simulation that mirrors decision-making by market participants. 

• Faculty: C. Knittel
• T;TH 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM; REC F 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Spring 2025 | Introduction to ethics in business, with a focus on business management. Students explore theoretical concepts in business ethics, and cases representing the challenges they will likely face as managers. Opportunity to work with guest faculty as well as business and other professional practitioners. Individual sessions take the form of moderated discussion, with occasional short lectures from instructor.

• Faculty: L. Hafrey
• MW 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Spring 2024 | Experiential study of the organizational change process within the larger context of the community in which the organization resides. Exposes students to leadership exemplars in the for-profit, nonprofit, and public sectors. Examines cases of complex social dynamics in areas of housing, employment, credit, education, and criminal justice. Centers around a semester-long action learning project in which students assist a local nonprofit organization in achieving sustainable social justice objectives. Through a project identified with the nonprofit leaders, students apply their knowledge of systems and their practice of leadership to recommend an operational change that advances the mission of the organization

• Faculty: Bridget Akinc
• M 4:00PM - 7:00PM

Spring 2025 | Examines internal and external entrepreneurship driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, aiming to utilize digital innovations that lead to societal change. Probes a range of AI-generated business models and opportunities, exploring challenges in key sectors such as digital health, sustainability, fintech, and the decentralization of society and commerce by developing sustainable and economically viable solutions. Content includes blockchain, privacy technology, data markets, and AI advancements like Web3 and distributed machine learning. Cases illustrate examples of both successful and failed businesses, as well as difficulties in deploying and diffusing products. Guest speakers provide real-world insights into entrepreneurship. As a final project, students work in teams to develop a business plan executive summary for one of the featured technologies. Enrollment is limited; please see subject website for details.

• Faculty: J. Bonsen, S. Pentland, R. Raskar
• TH 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Fall 2024 | Provides a structured approach to innovation and entrepreneurship that creates business value while solving social and environmental problems. Covers physical domains of sustainability, e.g., waste, water, food, energy, and mobility, as well as social and human capital domains, such as health and education. Students explore case studies of critical decisions made in the early stages of an enterprise that help determine its impact. Considers perspective and tools applicable to the startup context or to new lines of business in existing enterprises.

• Faculty: J. Jay
• MW 2:30 - 4:00 PM

Fall 2024 | Project-based subject, in which teams of students from MIT and surrounding colleges work with startups on problems of strategic importance to the venture. Provides an introduction to entrepreneurship, and the action learning component allows students to apply their academic knowledge to the problems faced by entrepreneurial firms. Popular sectors include software, hardware, robotics, clean technology, and life sciences. Meets with 15.3991 when offered concurrently. Expectations and evaluation criteria differ for students taking graduate version; consult syllabus or instructor for specific details. *Project must be related to sustainability to be counted as an elective for the certificate.

• Faculty: K. Hickey
• M 5:30 - 8:30 PM

Spring 2025 | Deep dive into social impact investing – an approach intentionally seeking to create financial return and positive social impact that is actively measured. Imparts a solid analytical framework for evaluating the spectrum of social impact investments, including mission related investing. Includes a project which provides practical experience in evaluating an impact enterprise or a public markets ESG strategy. Students gain experience in structuring different types of investments, and critically compare and contrast these investments with traditional mainstream investments, with a view to understanding structural constraints. Designed for students interested in the intersection of finance and social impact. Provides career guidance and networking opportunities.

• Faculty: G. Rao
• T;TH 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Fall 2024 | Lecture course on governmental policies for encouraging sustainable growth, improving the environment, and advancing employment in developed and developing countries.

• Faculty: Ashford, Hall
• W 4:00 - 6:30 PM

Fall 2023 | Experiential opportunity to practice new leadership skills, such as deep listening, being present (mindfulness), and generative dialogue. In weekly coaching circles, each student has one full session to present their current leadership edge and receive feedback from peer coaches. Includes an additional action learning project.

• Faculty: O. Scharmer
• Th 5:30 - 9:00 PM

Spring 2025 | This experiential Action Learning Lab is focused on work, community and culture in rural and urban regions of the United States. The Lab stems from concern about the economic, cultural, social and geographic issues that are tearing at the fabric of America. Students work with dynamic local leaders determined to change the trajectory of their communities. Deep discussions in the classroom combined with field-work in rural regions and urban centers throughout the U.S. aim toward understanding and transcending the American divides.

• Faculty: L. Hafrey, C. McDowell
• W 2:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Spring 2025 | Focuses on the planning, processes, and activities of supply chain management for companies involved in international commerce. Students examine the end-to-end processes and operational challenges in managing global supply chains, such as the basics of global trade, international transportation, duty, taxes, trade finance and hedging, currency issues, outsourcing, cultural differences, risks and security, and green supply chains issues. 

• Faculty: S. Willems
• T;TH 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Spring 2025 | Provides a unifying framework for analyzing strategic decisions in manufacturing and service operations. Covers decisions in technology, facilities, vertical integration, human resources, sourcing, supply chain, and other strategic areas. Examines how decisions in these areas can be made to align with business strategy, and emphasizes the concept of operations as a source of competitive advantage. Discusses operations strategy within the firm, across the supply chain, and for growth and new business models. 

• Faculty: K. Zheng
• T;TH 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Fall 2023 | Examines the behavior of consumers through the lens of behavioral economics, cognitive science, and social psychology (Also offered in Spring)

• Faculty: David Rand

Spring 2025 | Focuses on developing the skills and tools needed to successfully apply systems thinking and simulation modeling in diverse real-world settings, including growth strategy, management of technology, operations, public policy, product development, supply chains, forecasting, project management, process improvement, service operations, and platform-based businesses, among others. (Also offered in Fall)

• Counts towards Sustainability Certificate requirements
• Faculty: V. Yang
• Multiple. MW 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM OR 1:00 PM - 2:30PM; Rec F 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM

Spring 2025  |  Drawing on academic and practical experiences, students will engage in a semester-long project focused on a host organization's sustainability challenge.

• Sustainability Certificate requirement  | Co-req:15.915: Business Strategies for a Sustainable Future 
• Faculty: B. Patten
• W 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Spring 2025 |  Develops a pragmatic, action-oriented approach to sustainability: the alignment between healthy businesses, healthy environments, healthy societies, and an economy that meets human needs. In-class simulations and role-playing provide a robust foundation for understanding sustainability challenges. Cases analyze innovative strategies for sustainable businesses and organizations. Class discussions explore how sustainability is changing existing business models and market structures, how to develop sustainable management practices, and how firms can implement those practices successfully.

• Faculty: J. Jay, J. Sterman
• Multiple. T;TH 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM OR 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
• Sustainability Certificate requirement | Required for 15.878: Sustainable Business Lab (S-Lab), can be taken concurrently.

Spring 2024 | Opportunity for group study by graduate students on current topics related to management not otherwise included in curriculum.

• Faculty: Andy Sun
• MW 2:30PM - 4:00PM

Spring 2025 |  Opportunity for group study by graduate students on current topics related to management not otherwise included in curriculum.

• Faculty: B. Soltoff
• T;TH 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Spring 2025 | Opportunity for group study by graduate students on current topics related to management not otherwise included in curriculum. Restricted to Sloan Fellows & 2nd year MBAs.

• Faculty: S. Neal, R. Pozen
• T 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM

IAP 2025 |  Group study of current topics related to management not otherwise included in curriculum.

• Faculty: Z. Ton

Fall 2024 | A practical perspective - must be an effort linked to sustainability. (Only available to Legatum Fellows)

• Faculty: L. Lamb, D. Sherif
• M 5:30 - 8:00 PM

Spring 2024 | Introduction to the major dilemma that faces manufacturing and society for the 21st century: how to support economic development while protecting the environment. Subject addresses industrial ecology, materials flows, life-cycle analysis, thermodynamic analysis and exergy accounting, manufacturing process performance, product design analysis, design for the environment, recycling and ecological economics. Combines lectures and group discussions of journal articles and selected literature, often with opposing views. 

• Faculty: T. G. Gutowski
• MW 1:00PM - 2:30PM

Fall 2023  |  This course explores connections between what we eat and who we are through cross-cultural study of how personal and collective identities, social relations.

• Faculty: H. Paxson

• TR2.30-4

Fall 2024 | Addresses challenges in working towards global justice including poverty, food and water insecurity, healthcare disparities, human rights violations, violence and dislocation, and environmental risk. Focuses on gender and identity, locating the root causes of inequality within cultural, political and economic contexts. Designed to give a framework to understand gender dynamics. Teaches how to integrate gender sensitive strategies into development work. Classes, readings, and final projects illustrate how design and implementation of international development strategies can provide capacity building and income generation opportunities. Meets with EC.798 when offered concurrently. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments. Limited to 20 total for versions meeting together.

• Faculty: S. Haslanger, L. McDonald

• W 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Spring 2024 | Spatializes large technological systems of energy, analyzes existing and speculative energy visions, and imagines energy futures in relation to concerns of ecology, politics, and aesthetics. Identifies different scales of thinking about the territory of energy from that of environmental systems, to cities, regions, and global landscapes. Readings and students' research projects draw on critical geography, history of technology, environmental history to synthesize energy attributes within the design disciplines. Limited to 10. 

• Faculty: R. Ghosn
• M 1:00PM - 4:00PM

Fall 2024 | Presents artistic intelligence and modes of creative production as ways to contribute to and critically engage with climate science. In conversation with local stakeholders, students develop hybrid projects of art and design that negotiate between pragmatics and fiction to envision solutions to the climate crisis. Case studies and class participation examine dialectics between aesthetics and scientific knowledge related to environmental care and repair. Includes prototyping and publishing spatial, digital, and material experimentations to generate new work individually and/or collaboratively by way of diverse media explorations. Visiting speakers and field trips accompany lectures, readings, class discussions, and presentations. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version. Lab fee required.

• Faculty: Consult G. Urbonas
• MW 9:30 am - 12:30 pm

Fall 2024 | Fundamental research methodologies and ongoing investigations in building tehnology to support the development of student research projects. Topics drawn from low energy building design and thermal comfort, building systems analysis and control, daylighting, structural design and analysis, novel building materials and construction techniques and resource dynamics. Organized as a series of two- and three-week sessions that consider topics through readings, discussions, design and analysis projects, and student presentations.

• Faculty: Consult L. R. Glicksman, C. Mueller, C. Reinhart, L. K. Norford, J. Ochsendorf
• Th 3:00 - 5:00 PM

Fall 2024 | Introduces fundamentals of electric energy systems as complex dynamical network systems. Topics include coordinated and distributed modeling and control methods for efficient and reliable power generation, delivery, and consumption; data-enabled algorithms for integrating clean intermittent resources, storage, and flexible demand, including electric vehicles; examples of network congestion management, frequency, and voltage control in electrical grids at various scales; and design and operation of supporting markets. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

• MW 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Fall 2024 | Issues in international development, appropriate technology and project implementation addressed through lectures, case studies, guest speakers and laboratory exercises. Enrollment limited by lottery; must attend first class session. 

• Faculty: Staff
• T Th 3:00 - 5:00 PM

Spring 2024 | This course addresses mitigation and adaptation to climate change as it pertains to water and health. 

• Faculty: Murcott
• Th 12:00PM-3:00PM, LAB Time TBA

Fall 2024 |  This class explores global greenhouse gas emissions from energy systems and potential levers for reducing emissions

• Faculty: J. Trancik

• T Th 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Spring 2024 | Leading experts guide discussions of how to safeguard the world against the greatest threats to our future. Topics range from the overt perils of pandemic and nuclear proliferation to the underlying coordination failures responsible for climate change, and from technological stagnation to transformative AI. Draws on the history of invention and science communication to explore which technologies are most likely to shape the future and how inventors and developers can influence outcomes, with the goal of determining how to accomplish as much good as possible. Emphasizes science writing and communication. Students write three op-eds on key issues and participate in a group project aiming to coordinate effective action. Students taking the graduate version complete additional work.

• Faculty: K. Esvelt, M. Specter
• Th 1:00PM - 2:30PM

Fall 2024 | Explores the linkages between supply chain management and corporate finance. Emphasizes how the supply chain creates value for both the shareholders of the company and for the stakeholders affected by the company's operations. Sessions combine lectures and data-rich cases from the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer perspective. Topics include accounting fundamentals, financial analysis, activity-based costing, working capital management, cash flow projections, capital budgeting, and sustainability.

• Faculty: J. Goentzel, J. Rice
• T Th 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM

Spring 2024| Focus on the fundamental tools and techniques required to analyze and design environmentally sustainable supply chain systems.

• Faculty: Velazquez
• MW 10:00AM-11:30AM

Fall 2024 | Examines human concern about the planet and how that fixation shapes concepts of time & space, knowledge-production, understandings of what it means to be human and non-human, as well as trends in scholarship, art, culture & politics. Indexes the way numerous actors and institutions came to understand, debate & narrate the Anthropocene, a geological epoch defined by human-induced climate change. Explores how it as a concept has opened up new ways of understanding relations within the planet, including care, accountability & multi-species mutualism. Considers narrative registers as well, how scholars, writers, artists & working people narrate the Anthropocene. Students undertake an original project in research &/or experimental narrative forms inspired by the reading. Limited to 12.

• Faculty: K. Brown, M. Black
• W 10:00 am - 1:00 pm