Community Partnerships

Sustainability Studies is built on the conviction that the most important learning happens in relationship. Our community partnerships span every scale — from neighborhood associations, local food activists and entrepreneurs, and city and county councilors, to state agencies and regional coalitions, to national and global organizations working at the frontiers of environmental justice, food sovereignty, and ecological restoration.

Partners include organizations like Participatory Budgeting Albuquerque (PBABQ), Three Sisters Kitchen, City of Albuquerque Sustainability Office, New Mexico Environment, Grassroots International, the United Nations, and many others.

These relationships are not a supplement to the curriculum — they are the curriculum. Through them, students engage with the full complexity of sustainability work: the politics, the creativity, the long-term relationship-building, and the practical problem-solving that no textbook can fully capture.

Some of these partnerships extend across borders, through field immersion programs in Brazil — where the planetary dimensions of our local work come fully into view.

UNM Partnerships

Sustainability Studies is deeply woven into the broader intellectual life of the university. We collaborate with centers, institutes, and programs across UNM whose work intersects with our own — deepening our research, expanding student opportunities, and strengthening our collective capacity to engage with the challenges of our time.