Kiersten Chan, Contributor
Manhattan University (MU) has officially introduced a new 15-credit Sustainability Studies minor housed within its interdisciplinary ARCH division. The minor is open to students across all three of MU’s schools: Kakos School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS), the School of Engineering and the O’Malley School of Business, and is built around the premise that environmental challenges cannot be contained within a single academic discipline.
Professor of political science Pamela Chasek, Ph.D., told The Quadrangle about why sustainability spans across all disciplines.
“Every environmental issue is actually a human issue,” Chasek said.
The minor marks a deliberate reboot for environmental education at MU following the elimination of the university’s former Environmental Studies major and minor during a period of downsizing. Revival efforts began four years ago under Marcy Kelly, Ph.D., Dean of KSAS, and were finalized after the creation of the ARCH Innovation Exchange last year provided an institutional platform.
For Dean Kelly, aligning all three schools around environmental stewardship directly reflects the university’s institutional identity.
“As a Lasallian Catholic institution, it is important to offer programming that supports our mission,” Kelly wrote in a statement to The Quadrangle. “Environmental stewardship is squarely in line with our Lasallian Catholic mission.”
Unlike its predecessor, the new minor originated through direct collaboration across engineering, business, the sciences and liberal arts before being incorporated into ARCH. If student enrollment in the minor is significant, Kelly noted that university leadership hopes to eventually expand the program into a full Sustainability Studies major.
The curriculum requires five courses structured in a deliberate three-step sequence: first understanding foundational environmental systems, then examining how those systems intersect with a student’s primary major and finally taking coursework outside their home school. Students begin with Introduction to Environmental Science and Sustainability, complete two electives within their home department, take one course from another school and finish with an applied capstone.
Rather than asking students to abandon their primary majors, the program forces them to apply their academic background into a shared dialogue.
“Sustainability is inherently a cross-disciplinary challenge, so it only made sense to build a program that reflects that reality,” Kelly wrote. “Kakos contributes to the foundational underpinnings of the field. This includes the science behind sustainability, as well as the health and political perspectives that shape how sustainability challenges actually play out in the real world. Engineering complements that foundation by equipping students with the technical skills to respond directly to sustainability problems. And O’Malley [Business School] will provide courses to examine the financial dimensions of sustainability.”
According to Kelly, the program structure marks a deliberate shift from traditional environmental programs.
“Traditional environmental studies programs tend to focus primarily on understanding environmental systems,” Kelly wrote. “Those programs study the science of how ecosystems work, how they’re affected by human activity, and what the consequences of that impact look like. That theoretical foundation is essential, and it’s still part of what students in this minor will learn. But Sustainability Studies goes a step further by asking a more applied question: given what we know about these systems, how do we actually act on that knowledge in a way that’s workable?”
That applied framework builds on coursework previously developed by Chasek. In past environmental politics classes, students researched campus operations and produced cost-benefit analyses for university administrators. Several student proposals were later implemented on campus, including setting library default printing to double-sided and replacing single-use bottled water at catered events with hydration stations.
Chasek documented this problem-based learning approach in a 2024 article in International Studies Perspectives, examining classroom projects built around the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The model asks students to navigate institutional cost, human behavior and logistics alongside environmental data.
The new minor capstone expands this approach through external client partnerships. Currently being developed in collaboration with J. Patrick Abuelencia, Ph.D., associate professor of engineering at MU, the Urban Sustainability Consulting Capstone will place student teams into consulting roles.
“We envision that [the] course will bring together students from all three schools, who will serve as a consulting firm to help a non-profit organization address a sustainability concern,” Kelly wrote to The Quadrangle.
The program also sits alongside MU’s new Artificial Intelligence minor, set to launch in fall 2026. While developed independently, the coexistence of both programs allows students to examine the resource demands behind emerging technologies. According to a 2024 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, U.S. data centers could consume up to 12 percent of the nation’s total electricity by 2028.
“Absolutely. I think there’s a lot of potential in that area. Certainly, more to come….,” Kelley wrote, about the connection between the two fields.
The minor aims to encourage students to evaluate those tradeoffs early in their careers, whether an engineering student evaluating energy infrastructure, a business student managing corporate supply chains or a computer science student tracking resource consumption.
Some of the biggest problems AI creates for the environment were stated in 2024, by the United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP), to occur during various stages of AI related processes: manufacturing electronics, generating responses and consuming resources to produce.
“Most large-scale AI deployments are housed in data [centers]… the electronics they house rely on a staggering amount of grist: making a 2 kg computer requires 800 kg of raw materials, as well, the microchips that power AI need rare earth elements, which are often mined in environmentally destructive ways,” UNEP wrote.
“The second problem is that data [centers] produce electronic waste, which often contains hazardous substances, like mercury and lead. Third, data [centers] use water during construction and, once operational, to cool electrical components. Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million,” UNEP added.
As the program launches, administrative details including specific course offerings continue to develop. Chasek also noted that a common hurdle is student visibility, as undergraduates often assume a minor requires taking extra credits beyond their degree plan when room for electives already exists.
University leadership hopes the program’s practical design will attract a broad range of students across campus.
“We invite any student who is interested in the minor to take advantage of it,” Kelly said. “We did not design the minor with a particular group of students in mind.”
Later, Kelly added that she hopes the minor gives students “the opportunity to think more holistically about sustainability across our disciplines,” while delivering “a positive experience in the proposed capstone course that benefits our local community.”