Welcome
Director's Welcome
Welcome to Sustainability Studies at the University of New Mexico
This program grows from a place with deep roots in the questions we ask - and reaches toward a planetary horizon. UNM sits on the traditional homelands of the Pueblo of Sandia, within a region where Pueblo peoples have long sustained complex relationships with land, water, and community. The acequia systems that communities wove across New Mexico during the Spanish and Mexican periods - many still functioning after centuries - represent some of the oldest traditions of shared resource stewardship in the United States. And it was here in Albuquerque, working as a young forester along the Rio Grande, that Aldo Leopold began developing his land ethic - the idea that we are not apart from the land but members of its community. Leopold lived on 14th Street, gardened in the bosque, and from here helped establish the Gila Wilderness, the first designated wilderness area in the world.
These traditions - Indigenous, Hispano, and ecological - nourish our work as living systems of knowledge. And they open onto a recognition that runs through everything we do: every sustainability challenge is simultaneously local and planetary. What if the water-sharing practices of acequia parciantes could inform how cities across arid regions steward scarce resources in a hotter world? What if emerging science - climate modeling, geospatial analysis, agroecological design - were woven with place-based wisdom from New Mexico to Southeast Asia? And what if we asked these questions shoulder-to-shoulder with the communities living them?
Students in Sustainability Studies learn by doing. Many courses function as consultancies with regional partners. Internships embed students in the work of nonprofits, agencies, and movements. Capstone projects generate knowledge and intervention alongside the communities most affected. Study abroad immerses students in practices like the landless workers' movement of Brazil’s large scale agroecological cooperatives. Students arrive with their own knowledge, questions, and commitments - and the program is designed to honor and deepen what they bring, drawing on affiliated faculty from more than a dozen departments and a web of partnerships from Albuquerque's neighborhoods to international research and practice networks.
Sustainability is ancient and urgent at once - and the most generative futures emerge where deep roots meet planetary awareness. This is the education we offer: rooted here, alive to the world, cultivating the futures we need - together.
Learn More About the Minor Degree Plan
Our vision is to cultivate a learning community that transforms paradigms and creates pathways to an equitable and sustainable world
Mission
Sustainability Studies cultivates changemakers who weave deep and critical inquiry with effective action. We integrate knowledge and methods from the sciences, humanities, and arts to equip students to engage the urgent challenges of our time with rigor, creativity, and purpose. Our work is rooted in New Mexico and reaches toward the planetary: through community-engaged classrooms, field immersion programs, and research that matters beyond the university. We prepare students to act - with knowledge, with relationships, and with a commitment to sustainability, resilience, and justice.
