About the FENS

The Faculty Environmental Network for Sustainability (FENS) is a group of more than 100 faculty and staff from all five MIT schools working to increase opportunities for undergraduates and graduate students—regardless of their primary fields of study—to learn more about the dynamics of socioecological systems and strategies for ensuring sustainable development.

In the world-at-large, and at many of the top tier colleges and universities with which MIT competes, environmental studies majors have been in place for a number of years. In the past five years, a number of schools like Columbia University, Stanford University, Harvard University and others have broadened their focus—moving from primarily a domestic emphasis on environmental studies to an international focus on sustainable development (see pages 17–24 of this report). In part, this shift has been driven by growing international concern about climate change. It also reflects global worries about dwindling water supplies, threats to endangered habitats and species, the adverse effects of urbanization and the need to provide mobility and infrastructure in an increasing numbers of mega-cities (i.e., cities with over 10 million inhabitants), the quest for sustainable energy supplies and greater energy efficiency, a desire to spur "green" technology innovation, and fears about pandemics and other global threats to human health. Unless the world can move to more economically, ecologically and socially sustainable patterns of development, vast numbers of people will perish.

MIT is engaged in a wide range of research activities aimed at addressing some of these worries. The Institute is on the verge of announcing an Environmental Research Initiative. At the same time, we need to extend and deepen our teaching, providing an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education that will equip the next generation of scientists, engineers, applied social scientists, humanists and managers to take responsibility for assuring more sustainable patterns of development.

To overcome long-standing obstacles to interdisciplinary education that currently make it difficult for students majoring in one field to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to pursue emerging professional careers in Environment and Sustainability, and ensure that our undergraduates can compete for entry into the best graduate programs in the world, more than 100 faculty and staff at MIT have banded together to recommend a new Undergraduate Minor and a new Graduate Certificate.