ENV 966a () / 2024-2025

Sustainability Implementation: Change Management in Institutional Settings

Credits: 3 Fall 2024: Th, 9:00-11:50, Sage 41c

This course is capped at 20 students. Interested students should register no later than August 27. If more than 20 students register, priority (in order) will be given to YSE students in their second year or beyond, YSE students in their first year, students from other Yale graduate schools, and finally Yale College students. Final enrollment decisions will be shared by end-of-day on August 28.

Yale’s formal sustainability efforts are nearing the two-decade mark, with the Office of Sustainability established in 2005, but the work to make the campus more sustainable has been going on far longer. From sending food scraps to pig farmers in the 1800s, to responding to energy crises and crashes with infrastructure changes, to establishing early recycling programs in the 1980s, the University’s work has deep roots, if not always the comprehensive impact some would desire. This YSE Capstone course provides students with the opportunity to learn about this long history of effort to improve the University’s sustainability and engage in the real act of change management in current efforts on campus. Exploring change management theory and learning from many on campus experts, students work in groups, bringing a diversity of experiences and knowledge to the table to tackle real and wicked problems in our midst. In taking on these timely projects, students have the opportunity to tangibly impact Yale’s ongoing efforts to fully embrace sustainable operations while experiencing the friction, joy, disappointment, learning, and challenge that are all part of working to make real change happen.