Ensuring Sustainable Futures

At the University of York, we consider sustainability to be a key element of our responsibilities and values. We want our students to understand the sustainability challenges our world faces, but more than that, we want our students to drive changes aimed at ensuring future sustainability.

Climate change, habitat destruction and unsustainable resource use are all major challenges to the future stability of our world. But it’s not enough to just learn about the challenges. We must focus on the solutions.

In this module, you will learn about current and future sustainability challenges and the ways in which we are trying to solve them through research, education, policies and innovations. As part of our module, you will engage in a number of discussions and practical sessions.

You need to have at least an upper-intermediate level of English (ca. IELTS 5).

Target group

Our international Undergraduate Summer School is open to all students currently undertaking an undergraduate (Bachelors) degree.

You must have had your 18th birthday before your programme starts.

We welcome students from all nationalities and backgrounds; however, as we aim to have an international student body on this programme, we can only accept a limited number of participants from any one country.

Course aim

The aim of this module is to introduce you to the skills, knowledge and tools needed to develop solutions to the world’s most pressing sustainability challenges.

In particular, it will:

provide you with knowledge of sustainability challenges
introduce you to a solutions-based strategy of evaluating sustainability challenges
enable you to confidently discuss and propose solutions to sustainability challenges.
This course is offered by the Department of Environment and Geography, a top 15 UK research department, ranked 2nd for research impact in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences.