32 Business View - August 2015
were most intrigued by the social aspects of sustain-
ability. “Our students really want to give back to their
community,” she explains. “They very much want to
see a high quality of life across different and diverse
populations and they really want to engage with help-
ing to make a more sustainable society. A lot of our ef-
forts have been to try and identify what the students’
interests were and help to support them to meet the
goals that they have.”
So, over the past several years, Furman has worked
to inculcate the school’s entire curriculum with more
ways to study and apply sustainability than any oth-
er private liberal arts college in the country. Furman
now offers 36 sustainability-focused courses and over
50 sustainability-related courses that span a variety
of majors. “We have everything from a general edu-
cation requirement around the connections between
humans and the natural environment for all students
to take,” says Halfacre. “We’ve worked, now, with a
quarter of the faculty to help them to infuse sustain-
ability topics into their existing courses. So, a course
like American Government might now have a section
on Sustainability as a Social Movement. A course in
religion might have a topical area that’s covering the
nature of sustainability as it relates to spirituality. Or
a business course will have topics related to the tri-
ple bottom line, full-cost analysis, or other techniques
about how businesses can better perform. We also
have several interdisciplinary minors that are related
to sustainability topics.” In addition, Furman offers the
country’s only undergraduate degree in Sustainability
Fellows test bikes for students bike rental program Student fellows conduct bird surveys to study
ecosystem services
CLEAN AND GREEN
