Rachel Carson College is the home of a Minor in Sustainability Studies, designed to offer students training in different applications to addressing environmental issues in an equitable and effective way. The Sustainability Studies minor offers a model for college-based undergraduate curricula and pedagogies and emphasizes the central academic role of UCSC’s college system on the campus. The minor is highly interdisciplinary, and open to all UCSC students.

Purpose & Pedagogy

Sustainabilities and Social Justice Minor Learning Goals: From Sustainability to Sustainabilities and Social Justice

During the 2025-2026 academic year Rachel Carson College will be revising the Sustainability Minor. The revisions, which will be launched in fall of 2026, are reflected in the proposed name change: Sustainabilities and Social Justice Minor. We are shifting the minor’s emphasis from green technologies and entrepreneurship toward broad justice-centered approaches to sustainability. The modifications will include interdisciplinary approaches to studying systemic inequalities and environmental histories that center justice and diverse ways of knowing.

Sustainabilities and Social Justice Minor Learning Goals:

Understand Justice-Centered Sustainability: Articulate how climate change and environmental degradation disproportionately affect marginalized communities, including communities of color, Indigenous peoples, low-income populations, and women and girls.
Engage Diverse Perspectives & Knowledge Systems: Critically engage with Indigenous, community-based, and global South perspectives on sustainability and explore them alongside Western scientific frameworks.
Apply Systems Thinking: Analyze the interconnections between environmental, social, political, and economic systems, with attention to issues of equity, power, and justice.
Develop Practical & Experiential Skills: Design or participate in hands-on projects (research, community partnerships, or applied practice) that address sustainability challenges in just and inclusive ways.
Communicate Across Audiences: Demonstrate the ability to communicate sustainability issues and justice-centered solutions to diverse audiences – including peers, community partners, and policy stakeholders.

Pedagogy and Structure of the Sustainabilties and Justice Minor

The minor will integrate experiential learning with classroom learning to empower students to use education, interdisciplinary knowledge and systems thinking as tools for transformative change, following in the legacy of Rachel Carson. As such, we are changing some of the requirements and adding three new courses meant to deepen student’s knowledge by approaching sustainability through a justice- and equity-centered lens, integrating multiple ways of knowing, and challenging dominant narratives in environmentalism with the intention of expanding and diversifying student’s understandings of the vast, varied spectrum of sustainability.

The revised curriculum will begin with a lower division introductory course. Upper division courses include: (1) a writing course; (2) a course on critical perspectives and diversified knowledge (3) experiential learning (field study); (4) tools for job readiness (design courses). We also include departmental courses students can choose from that align with the goals of the Sustainabilities and Social Justice Minor and will support students to develop discipline specific skills and knowledge.

Who We Are

Shelly Grabe, Rachel Carson Provost
Anne Freiwald, Sustainability Studies Academic Coordinator
Ella Carroll, College Academic Manager

Location/Contact Information

The Sustainability Studies Advising Office is located in the Rachel Carson College Academic Building, Room 123.
Advising Email: afreiwal@ucsc.edu

Making Appointments / Getting Your Questions Answered

For questions or to make an advising appointment, email the Academic Coordinator Anne Freiwald afreiwal@ucsc.edu. When emailing, please leave your student ID, name, and year, and in the subject line add Sustainability Studies Minor Advising. Advising appointments are available by appointment, generally Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00am to 12:00pm. Monday and Wednesday options are available upon request.

We are here to support you and your path to a Sustainability Minor!

Curriculum

For more details on completing the minor, refer to the checklist listed below.

Required Check List

Mandatory Lower division

Starting in the 2025-2026 Academic Year CRSN 55 will no longer be offered. As necessary, students may instead meet the requirement by taking two of the following:

CRSN 20G (2 units): Peregrine Falcon Return Winter Quarter

CRSN 60 (2 units): Education for Sustainable Living Program Spring Quarter

CRSN 82 (2 units): Environment and Society in Film Spring Quarter

Upper-division (A minimum of 25 upper-division units are required)

CRSN 151A: Sustainability Praxis in Water Management (Winter, 5 units) Winter 2026 Tues/Thur 9:50-11:25
Introduction to the societal, economic, technological, and environmental lenses that we consider when dealing with the wicked problems of sustainability in relation to food production, water, energy, and natural resources management. We will explore issues of sustainability considering the impacts of climate change with a focus on Environmental Justice. We will examine a case study on water source options currently under consideration in the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District. Students will learn different decision-making tools to come up with their own recommendations for an optimal water portfolio for the district which they will present and defend. This class empowers students with practical employable skills that can be taken directly to the field. Students will consider how social norms around resource flows, usage and distribution patterns are impacting ecological footprints, adoption of innovations and policymaking. (General Education Code: PE-T). K.Heady
CRSN 151C Sustainability Laboratory Tools, Techniques, and Applications (Fall/Winter/Spring, 3 units)
- Fall 2025 Topic: Sustainable Design, Thomas Rettenwender
- Winter 2025 Topic: Sustainable Textiles, Ann Alstadt
- Spring 2026 Topic: Biomimicry and 3D Printing, David Shugar

CRSN Capstone Series’ Courses (Counts towards upper-division units in addition to required courses)

CRSN 152-01 Resource Recovery for a Circular Economy: (Fall/Winter/Spring, 3 units) Fall 2025 Meets Mondays 12:00-pm-2:00pm
- Practical applications of knowledge emerging about the role of mycology in resource recovery and regenerative systems will include efforts in Mycorrhizal Carbon Sequestration, Post-fire Restoration and Watershed Pollution Prevention, Advanced Techniques for Waste Diversion and Resource Recovery (including degradation of food-soiled cardboard and polyurethane plastics). T. Ball
  - CRSN 152-01 focus: Soil and Mycology
CRSN 152-02: Natural Resource Management (Fall/Winter/Spring, 3 units) Fall 2025 Meets Tuesdays from 11:40am – 1:15pm
- Explore this interdisciplinary field of study balancing ecological processes with human land uses and stewardship. Gain experience organizing and implementing a field-based project, survey recreational intertidal harvesters to gain insight on the demographics and sustainability of this fishery, assess the impacts of harvesting on mussel bed stability using drone imagery. K Heady
CRSN 152-3: Innovative Water Systems for Food and Climate (Fall/Winter/Spring, 3 units) Meets Fall, Winter, Spring Wednesdays 9:00am-11:45am
- Learn water harvesting practices, sustainable food production, community engagement strategies, and much more. Offers students a deep dive into four sources of nonpotable water that can be optimized to grow food, create native habitat, save money and natural resources, and ultimately restore local water cycles and impact community micro-climates. A.Friewald
  - Students in 152-03 will have the opportunity to:
    - Design and build active (tanks) and passive (in ground infiltration basins) RWH systems
    - Learn strategies and skills to design and build home greywater systems (laundry, showers, baths), and
    - Assess, design and monitor stormwater (drainage) and blackwater (toilets, kitchen sinks) systems.
    - CRSN 152-03 focus: Innovative Water Systems for Food & Climate

Breadth Electives

(This list is updated regularly, but course offerings change. Please consult course lists prior to each quarter to see what is on offer. Some of these course require permission of instructor to enroll)

How to Declare

In order to ensure that the Sustainability Studies minor appears on AIS and your transcript at graduation, you need to do be decalred in your major and do the following:

Set up your meeting with the Sustainability Studies Academic Coordinator Anne Freiwald (afreiwal@ucsc.edu). You can make an appointment via SlugSuccess.
Log into MyUCSC and submit the Petition for Major/Minor via MyUCSC as soon as you have met major qualification requirements and/or reach your declaration deadline quarter, whichever comes first.
- If you are not yet logged into MyUCSC, the petition can also be accessed by going to MyUCSC and navigating to the Student Homepage and selecting the Undergraduate Student eForms tile > Petition for Major/Minor
The Sustainability adviser will then ensure that the minor is entered in AIS and will show up on your record. If the minor does not show up on AIS within a few weeks please contact (afreiwal@ucsc.edu ).

* The course schedule form is different for students exercising catalogue rights prior to Fall 2017 (Course planner for Pre-2017) and for those enrolling in Fall 2017 or later (Course planner for Fall 2017 or later). *

Minor Capstone Series: CRSN 152 Sections 01-03

In order to complete the Sustainability Studies Minor you will need to enroll in three quarters of field- based experiential learning. Please review the section topics below and select one of the sections (01, 02, or 03) to complete this requirement.

The Capstone series is a three quarter sequence designed to advance students as change agents prepared to contribute to game-changing efforts to bring about a more sustainable world. It represents an extraordinary opportunity for you to help design and move on sustainable development projects that explore new technologies or strategies for advancing lasting technical, economic, social, cultural and environmental change on campus and throughout the Monterey Bay region. 2025-2026 marks the 15th year since the launch of the capstone program for the Sustainability Studies Minor at Rachel Carson College.

You will work with an interdisciplinary project team to integrate the different dimensions of complex sustainability challenges. Science, technology, engineering, mathematics, sociology, ecology and especially… innovative design practices are all critical to this interdisciplinary and community centered approach.

As part of our team-based approach, you will:

Interact and work with experts from multiple disciplines to envision, design and apply innovations in sustainable technology, systems and practices to create sustainable solutions implicating energy, water, waste / pollution management, food and shelter in the built environment,
Learn core principles and practices of regenerative design,
Learn valuable team project planning, management, and implementation skills, and
Learn new and innovative approaches to problem solving in complex decision-making environments
Connect with key stakeholders on and off campus.

Sustainability Studies Minor Program