Sustainability is about choices made within specific environmental, economic, social, and cultural contexts. Sustainability scholarship involves creating, integrating and harnessing new knowledge to protect and improve social and natural systems and their interactions. The Department of Community Sustainability (CSUS) is an interdisciplinary department that addresses contemporary issues of sustainability in agriculture, recreation, natural resources, and the environment. The Department of Community Sustainability (CSUS) was formerly called the Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation, and Resource Studies (CARRS).
Consistent with its mission to assist in the development of sustainable communities, the department offers three undergraduate majors linked by a common core in community sustainability. These three majors - Environmental Studies and Sustainability (ESS); Sustainable Parks, Recreation and Tourism (SPRT); and Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources Education (AFNRE) – share a set of courses centered on community sustainability. The CSUS graduate program offers two graduate majors: Community Sustainability (MS and PhD) and Sustainable Tourism and Protected Areas Management (MS and PhD). In both undergraduate and graduate programs, CSUS embraces international as well as domestic applications, engagement, and opportunities.
Undergraduate
CSUS undergraduate programs are designed to educate scholars and practitioners who are able to create, integrate and harness new knowledge to protect and improve both social and natural systems.
Graduate
CSUS offers three graduate degree programs to prepare scholar-activists interested in sustainability, recreation and tourism, food systems, agriculture education and international development for research, community engagement and knowledge production.
News
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Fishing communities can model ecosystems as accurately as scientific experts
Published on January 16, 2020
Department of Community Sustainability researchers have demonstrated that fisheries stakeholders can accurately predict how pike interact with humans and other wildlife species in freshwater lakes.
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MSU awarded grant to study renewable energy adoption in Michigan
Published on November 18, 2019
The National Science Foundation awarded Michigan State University close to $1 million over the next five years to study renewable energy options and adoption in tribal and non-tribal communities.
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MSU master’s student named James Beard Foundation National Scholar
Published on November 15, 2019
Vanessa García Polanco is the first James Beard Foundation National Scholar from Michigan and Michigan State University.
