Sustainability Courses

Spring 2021 | Provides a practical introduction to key innovations in the fields of civil and environmental engineering that are currently having an impact.

• Professor: B. Marelli

• MWF 9:00

Spring 2024  |*Pre-Req of Chemistry* Introduction to environmental chemistry, focusing on the fate of chemicals in both natural and engineered systems. Covers equilibrium reactions (e.g., partitioning, dissolution/precipitation, acid-base, redox, metal complexation), and kinetically-controlled reactions (e.g., photolysis, free radical oxidation). Specific environmental topics covered include heavy metals in natural waters, drinking water, and soils; biogeochemical cycles; radioactivity in the environment; smog formation; greenhouse gases and climate change; and engineering for the prevention and remediation of pollution.

• Faculty: STAFF TBA
• MF 2:30PM - 4:00PM, LAB W 1:00PM - 3:00PM

Spring 2024 | Introduces the terrestrial carbon cycle in a climate change context, with a focus on ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry. Discussion-based seminars followed by practical classes to solve climate-related questions.

• Faculty: C. Terrer
• MF 2:30PM - 4:00PM, LAB 1:00PM - 3:00PM

Fall 2024 | Provides a detailed overview of the chemical transformations that control the abundances of key trace species in the Earth's atmosphere. Emphasizes the effects of human activity on air quality and climate. Topics include photochemistry, kinetics, and thermodynamics important to the chemistry of the atmosphere; stratospheric ozone depletion; oxidation chemistry of the troposphere; photochemical smog; aerosol chemistry; and sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and other climate forcers.

• Faculty: J. Kroll
• T Th 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Spring 2023 | Addresses economic growth, environmental preservation, and social equity through the lens of sustainability.

• Faculty: Knox-Hayes
• T 2:00-5:00 

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

Fall 2021 | Provides a critical introduction to the shape and determinants of political, social, and economic inequality in America, with a focus on racial and economic justice. 

• Faculty: Steil
• TR 9:30-11:00

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

Spring 2021 | Informs and prepares students to navigate the explicit and implicit power dynamics among stakeholders in decision-making processes that govern the planning and delivery of water and sanitation systems. 

• Carolini

• F 10-1

Spring 2024 | Focuses on the integration of land use and transportation planning, drawing from cases in both industrialized and developing countries. Highlights how land use and transportation influence the social organization of cities, assigning privileges to certain groups and segregating or negating access to the city to other groups. Covers topics such as accessibility; the use of data, algorithms, and bias; travel demand and travel behavior; governance; transit-oriented development; autonomous vehicles; transportation and real estate; and social, environmental, and health implications of land use and transportation. Develops students' skills to assess relevant policies, interventions, and impacts.

• Faculty: F. Duarte
• M 9:00AM - 12:00PM

Spring 2024 | Combines classroom lectures/discussion, readings, site visits, and field study to provide students with experience in various research techniques including stakeholder analysis, interviewing, photography and image analysis, focus groups, etc. Students examine the impacts of global demographic transition, when there are more older than younger people in a population, and explore emerging challenges in the built environment (e.g., age-friendly community planning, public transportation access, acceptance of driverless cars, social wellbeing and connectivity, housing and community design, design and use of public and private spaces, and the public health implications of climate change and aging).

• Faculty: J. Coughlin
• F 2:00PM - 5:00PM

Fall 2024 | Basics of international development from planning perspective.  Integrated socio-economic and environmental approach.

• Faculty: Susskind
• T Th 3:00 - 4:30 pm

Fall 2024 | The course explores the emerging basis of a social carbon economy and focuses on the understanding of how to integrate technology and social considerations into carbon management and emissions reduction strategies within urban areas. In an urban social carbon economy, the course will  focus on efforts to reduce carbon emissions and will explore methodologies to design solutions and generate value with a focus on social equity, community well-being, and inclusive development within urban contexts. 

• Faculty: R. Almeida, R. Chin
• T 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Fall 2024 | Addressing climate change and the transition to a net zero economy will require large scale financing across multiple sectors and for a diverse set of projects. Deploying this scale of capital in a manner that also promotes greater economic and racial equity will require skilled practitioners who have the knowledge and experience to craft financing solutions at multiple scales: government policy; institutional design; program and project implementation; and advancing financial and development system change.

• Faculty: J. Phillip Thompson, H. Harriel, K. Kaeufer K. Seidman
• M 2:00 - 3:30 PM W 2:00 - 4:00 PM

Fall 2023 | This course provides an introduction to the study of environmental phenomena that exhibit both organized structure and wide variability.

• Faculty: DH Rothman

• T Th 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Fall 2024 | Pre-Req 12.810 or Permission of Instructor Describes the general circulation of Earth's atmosphere and its maintenance. Second half of the course explores the response of the general circulation to climate change.

• Faculty: T. Tamarin-Brodsky
• MW 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Spring 2024 | 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: M. Bittrich
• Time TBA

Fall 2024 | Students master and apply economic theory, causal inference, and contemporary evidence to analyze policy challenges. These include the effect of minimum wages on employment, the value of healthcare, the power and limitations of free markets, the benefits and costs of international trade, the causes and remedies of externalities, the consequences of adverse selection in insurance markets, the impacts of labor market discrimination, and the application of machine learning to supplement to decision-making. Class attendance and participation are mandatory. Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.

• Faculty D. Autor

• MW 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Spring 2022 | Discusses theory and evidence on environmental externalities and regulatory, tax, and other government responses to problems of market failure.

• Professor: C Balboni

• TR 10:30 - 12:00, F 10:30 - 12:00

Spring 2024 | 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: Roberto Rigobon
• M 4:00PM - 7:00PM

Spring 2021 | Investigates the role of the private sector in developing economies, highlighting how solving market failures can improve overall welfare

• Suri

• TR 2:30PM-4:00PM

Spring 2023 | The course presents an in-depth interdisciplinary perspective of electric power systems, with regulation providing the link among the engineering, economic, legal and environmental viewpoints.

• Faculty: Batlle Lopez, Perez-Arriaga, Schittekatte
• T/Th 10:30AM-12:00PM

Spring 2024 | Theoretical and empirical perspectives on individual and industrial demand for energy, energy supply, energy markets, and public policies affecting energy markets.

• Knittel
• T;Th 2:30PM-4:00PM

Spring 2021 | The purpose of this course is to analyze these two countries within a coherent analytical framework (must be a sustainability-related project).

• Faculty: Grant, Huang
• MW 10:00AM-11:30AM

Spring 2023 | Examines how new approaches to operations, revenue, marketing, finance, and strategy enable improved social outcomes in resource-limited settings across Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

• Faculty: Sastry
• T/Th 1:00PM-2:30PM

Spring 2024 | Opportunity to address both individual skills and organizational strategies for advancing equity and inclusion.

• Faculty: Blackburn, Kelly
• T 4:00PM-7:00PM

Fall 2024  | Project-based approach to innovation and venture creation in the energy sector and sectors that can mitigate climate change. Explores how innovation and entrepreneurial concepts apply (or do not apply) to the significant opportunities in these industries. Working in teams, students create new ventures specifically for the energy sector or to address climate change. Lectures guide teams through key elements of their projects. 15.390 is recommended as a prerequisite.

• Faculty: Hynes, O'Sullivan, Wayman, Pless
• Th 5:30-8:00pm

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 2024 | This course provides an introduction to social impact investing – an investment approach intentionally seeking to create both financial return and positive social impact that is actively measured.

• Faculty: Rao
• T;Th 4:00PM-5:30PM

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

Spring 2024 | Reviews and analyzes federal and state regulation of air and water pollution, hazardous waste, green-house gas emissions, and the production and use of toxic chemicals. 

• Ashford, Caldart
• T;Th 3:30PM - 5:00PM

Spring 2024 | Discusses the broader trends in the labor market, how urban labor markets function, public and private training policy, other labor market programs, the link between labor market policy and economic development, and the organization of work within firms.

• Faculty: Anna Stansbury
• Th 1:00PM-4:00PM

Fall 2024 | Explores the use of operations tools and perspectives in the service sector, including both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Builds on conceptual frameworks and cases from a wide range of service operations, selected from health care, hospitality, internet services, supply chain, transportation, retailing, food service, entertainment, financial services, humanitarian services, government services, and others

• Faculty: Z. Ton
• MW 1:00 - 2:30 PM or MW 2:30 - 4:00 PM

Spring 2023 | Project-based course on product design; teaches design for environment.

• Faculty: Eppinger
• T;Th 1:00PM-2:30PM

Fall 2024 | Introduction to systems thinking and system dynamics modeling applied to strategy, organizational change, and policy design.  (Also offered in Spring).

• Sustainability Certificate Requirement 
• Faculty: H. Rahmandad
• Multiple. MW 1:00 - 2:30 PM or MW 2:30 - 4:00 PM 

Fall 2024 | Introduces governance and science aspects of complex environmental problems and approaches to solutions. Introduces quantitative analyses and methodological tools to analyze environmental issues that have human and natural components. Demonstrates concepts through a series of in-depth case studies of environmental governance and science problems.

• Faculty: A. Siddiqi
• F 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Fall 2024 | Establishes a foundation for formulating, analyzing, and executing strategies to develop and commercialize new products and services in technology-intensive industries. Develops and applies rigorous frameworks to examine the interaction between patterns of technological change, market dynamics, and the development of internal firm capabilities. Topics include profiting from innovation, the role of intellectual property, platform strategy, government regulation, and innovation policy. Applies concepts in various industry and case settings with an emphasis on addressing issues most relevant for today's changing economic landscape and fostering innovation for social progress, such as clean energy, environmental management, healthcare, and digitalization.

• Faculty: J. Pless
• MW 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

Spring 2023 | Discusses emerging energy opportunities at building, sub-national (city/state), and national scale for developing and deploying efficient grids. 

• Faculty: Michaels
• T;Th 1:00PM-2:30PM

Fall 2024 | The course will first introduce the big picture of energy system transition, then go into details of the key decision-making problems in electric power systems, and study the couplings between power and other infrastructure systems, and finally assess energy system transition in an integrated fashion. This course aims to lead PhD or advanced master students to the forefront of energy system research.  

• Faculty: A. Sun
• MW 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm

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

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

Fall 2020 | This course gives us an opportunity to understand why it can be so hard to talk about and across our different identities (with a particular focus on race and gender).

• Faculty: Blackburn
• WF 8:00-9:00AM

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

Spring 2023 | Introduces concepts of supply chain design and planning with a focus on supply chains for products destined to improve quality of life in developing countries.

• Professor: S. C. Graves
• MW 9:30-11:00 AM

Fall 2023 |  Provides an introduction to the concept of sustainability from various perspectives using the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the MIT campus and research.

• Faculty: Gutowski, Newman
• MW 1:00-2:30PM

Fall 2022 | Explores the complex interrelationships among humans and natural environments, focusing on non-western parts of the world in addition to Europe and the United States. 

• C. Walley
• W 1-4

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 2023 | Develops the materials principles, limitations and challenges in clean energy technologies, including solar, energy storage, thermoelectrics, fuel cells, and novel fuels.

• Faculty: H. Tuller
• TR 1:30 - 3:00

Fall 2024 | Critical introduction to key contemporary positions in urbanism to the ends of researching, representing, and designing territories that respond to the challenges of the 21st century. Provides an overview of contemporary urban issues, situates them in relation to a genealogy of urban precedents, and constructs a theoretical framework that engages the allied fields of architecture, landscape architecture, political ecology, geography, territorial planning, and environmental humanities. Comprised of three sections, first section articulates a framework on the urban as both process and form, shifting the emphasis from city to territory. Second section engages a series of related urban debates, such as density/sprawl, growth/shrinkage, and codes/exception. Third section calls upon urban agency in the age of environment through the object of infrastructures of trash, water, oil, and food. Limited to 25.

• Faculty: R. Ghosn

• W 2:00 - 5:00 pm

Fall 2024 | Introduction to the study of the thermal and luminous behavior of buildings. Examines the basic scientific principles underlying these phenomena and introduces students to a range of technologies and analysis techniques for designing comfortable indoor environments. Challenges students to apply these techniques and explore the role energy and light can play in shaping architecture. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

• Faculty: Reinhart
• MW 11:00-12:30

Fall 2024 | Examines the contemporary challenges and history of city planning on three continents - Africa, Asia, and South America. Students study a number of city plans, from the 'informal' settlements of Delhi and Nairobi, the modernist master plans of Brasilia and Baghdad, to climate action plans in various cities. Explores the relationship between dwelling and building in the design of cities, in conjunction with the environmental, social, political, and intellectual environments at the time of their planning. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

• Faculty: H. Gupta
• T 10:00 am - 1:00 pm

Fall 2022 | Students will have the opportunity to compare the working of U.S. policies in confronting a wide range of energy issues, from oil import dependence, climate policy, nuclear proliferation, in a domestic and an international context.

Faculty: John Deutch

Fall 2021 | Explores how climate is construed in the contemporary media in order to gain a better understanding of how views of climate change are shaped and received in the public sphere.

• Professor: J. Paradis
• T 7:00-10:00PM

Spring 2020 | This course pilots a new approach to humanitarian innovation, focusing on how to teach refugees and displaced the design process so that they can create technologies and tools to improve their lives.

• Faculty: Smith, Thompson
• MW 1:00-3:00

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 2022 | Using innovative and proven best-practice models to create curriculum and implement instruction about design thinking, science, engineering, global learning, community activism, and more.

• Faculty: Nam
• R 7:00-9:00 PM

Spring 2024 | Provides a project-based approach that engages students in understanding and addressing the applications of alternative energy technology in developing countries. Focuses on compact, robust, low-cost systems for generating electrical power. 

• Faculty: Sweeney
• MW 1:00PM-2:30PM, F 1:00PM-3:00PM 

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 2022 | Policy implications and basic understanding of energy technologies and their climate impacts.

• Faculty: Trancik
• TR 11:00-12:30

Spring 2024 | Explores how logistics management principles apply in dynamic, resource-constrained contexts, ranging from humanitarian crisis response to international development. Note: SCM.283/4 meet together - SCM.284 will also count for the certificate, though is not a requirement.

• Faculty: Goentzel
• MW 1-2:30PM

Spring 2024 | Introduces strategic procurement fundamentals to enhance both competitive advantage and resilience to supply chains. Covers frameworks and tools that managers use to elevate purchasing from an operational function to a strategic one. Includes both classic resilience- and cost-based portfolios, as well as modern perspectives, which consider sustainability and power. Combines theoretical and applied perspectives and is designed for students with or without previous procurement experience. Assessment based on case analysis and a final project.

• Faculty: D. Cornell
• Time TBA

Fall 2024 | Examines how science fiction is deployed as a political tool for enacting change in the present and how it has emerged as a privileged symbolic field for the expression of hopes and anxieties that drive both culture and tech industries. Explores how societies around the globe — both mainstream and in the periphery — are confronting a triple crisis that threatens not only civil order but also the very existence of certain forms of life: financial collapse which increased the awareness of mass inequality; climate change and loss of biodiversity; and the rise of ethno-nationalisms, which threaten representative democracies.

• Faculty: E. Nelson
• T 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm