Babson College
AC-3: Undergraduate Program

The concentration* is designed to appeal to students interested in environmental sustainability and social justice, including those students seeking careers within an environmental field. With this concentration, students will gain a broad understanding of and consideration for the importance of nature and the concept of environmental, economic, and social sustainability. Students will gain this understanding by taking courses spanning a number of different disciplines such as ecology, economics, engineering, entrepreneurship, film, law, literature, film, philosophy, and sociology. Students working in this concentration are challenged to recognize points of integration and points of tension between the needs of the planet and all its inhabitants and ecosystems, as well as the demands of business and economic growth.

Courses in Justice, Citizenship, and Social Responsibility explore how individuals and communities construct and find meaning in the world around them. This concentration allows students to understand how cultural and ethical structures are inherited, cultivated, and perpetuated locally and globally, and how they animate and orient human experience. Students take a broad range of courses in philosophy, anthropology, communications, history, political science and law to learn about people as actors in a social environment.

The Sustainability Certificate Program seeks to educate students to make use of the skills, tools, and concepts from the liberal arts, business, and engineering to address environmental challenges and to evaluate potential paths towards sustainability at both the individual and societal level. Addressing the challenge of using earth’s resources sustainably requires a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach in which basic research about the causes and consequences of environmental problems is combined with an understanding of the incentives and processes for large-scale economic activity, and the technology with which to reconfigure the human effect on the natural world. Wellesley, Olin, and Babson Colleges are uniquely suited to address this challenge by providing a joint program capable of educating students in ways that each cannot accomplish alone. By truly integrating business, engineering, and the liberal arts in the service of environmental sustainability, this program provides students with the cross-disciplinary academic preparation and the cross-campus cultural collaboration experiences needed to approach environmental issues holistically.

*Babson only offers one degree program for all undergraduate students: Bachelor of Science in Business Management. Students can select from over 25 "concentrations" which are somewhat similar to majors at other campuses. The Tri-Campus Sustainability Certificate is open to all students.