From K–12 to corporate upskilling, ASU guides learners of all ages to design a sustainable future

When Kennedy Gourdine was a high school student in Maryland, she conducted research on using native plants to help clean up pollution in the Chesapeake Bay. The bay is famed for its seafood and sandy beaches. But runoff from farms, roads and wastewater treatment causes algal blooms that can suffocate sea animals and sicken swimmers.

Gourdine says the research experience sparked her interest in environmental science and, more broadly, sustainability.

“It’s important because it affects us all. We live within the environment,” says Gourdine, now a senior pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in sustainability at Arizona State University.

“Sustainability is not just about environmental sustainability. ... It’s about longevity and how we can last in the best way possible for our environment and our future and our kids.”

When she started comparing colleges to apply to, she prioritized two things: a sustainability program and affordability. She says ASU provided both.

ASU’s School of Sustainability, now part of the College of Global Futures, was the first in the nation when it launched in 2006. Since then, ASU has become a global leader in educating students about how to ensure a thriving future for all. 

In addition to college-level courses and degree programs, ASU experts provide resources for K–12 teachers and students, working professionals looking to boost their skills, and informal educators such as museums and libraries.

Other U.S. universities now offer schools of sustainability, but ASU is the only institution with a College of Global Futures. If that sounds impossibly ambitious — studying the whole future of the whole world — that’s by design.

“It’s deliberately quite broad because the complex challenges that we’re facing will change,” explains Miki Kittilson, dean of the College of Global Futures. “We need to be nimble, and we need to have a holistic approach.”

The College of Global Futures is about designing the future we want. Sustainability is an important part of that. But it also means preparing for future challenges and ensuring that new technologies benefit rather than harm society.

The college encompasses four schools: the School of Sustainability, the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, the School of Complex Adaptive Systems and the School of Ocean Futures. They all equip students with the skills and knowledge to solve complex problems through three approaches: blending disciplines for a holistic perspective, developing a global mindset and making a difference through project-based learning.

“Making a difference is always in the back of my mind — just how can I help others?” Gourdine says. “Something that surprised me about my ASU experience would be the type of opportunities I’ve had here. I thought when I went to college it would be like, I learn and then I’d leave. But no, there have been so many professional things I’ve done.”

Gourdine applied all three of the college’s approaches when she participated in a NASA BIG Idea Challenge with ASU’s Luminosity Lab. NASA asked competitors to develop low-size, low-weight and low-power inflatable technologies that could benefit future moon missions. The ASU team designed an inflatable pad for moon landings. Current landers kick up a lot of rocks and dust, which can damage the spaceship as well as future habitats at the site. The team’s solution won the Best Systems Engineering Award.

Gourdine brought her sustainability knowledge to bear on decisions about materials and design for the project, encouraging the team to incorporate environmental and accessibility considerations. In addition to contributing her sustainability knowledge, she supported business development, outlined steps to advance the technology’s maturity level, and served as director of photography for the project.

Gourdine is also a member of the Global Futures College Council and a student employee at ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative.

“We have a variety of different students. They’re not a monolith, but one common denominator is a sense of purpose,” Kittilson says. “They want to put their skills to work and do something that makes a difference in their communities. They want to do that now.”

To better prepare all ASU students to solve the complex global challenges we now face, ASU added a “Sustainability Thinking” category to its General Studies Gold requirements. These are curriculum requirements for undergraduate students in topics outside of their majors, designed to ensure a well-rounded education that equips graduates to succeed in their careers and lives. Over 500 faculty members participated in the process of designing these new requirements.

“What resulted is an interdisciplinary and flexible set of courses designed to teach students the foundational knowledge and skills they need to succeed now and in the future. The new requirements reflect ASU’s particular commitment to sustainability and ASU’s strength as an interdisciplinary, mission-guided institution,” says Nancy Gonzales, executive vice president and university provost.

A wide variety of classes are available to meet the sustainability requirement, including “Fundamentals of Sustainable Food Systems,” “Ocean Conservation,” “Sustainable Construction,” “Geography of Natural Resources,” “Building a Sustainable World” and more.

Not everyone goes to college, but everyone lives on the Earth and depends on its resources for survival and quality of life. This means K–12 students need the knowledge and tools to ensure that they and their families can thrive now and in the future.

Providing these tools can be difficult, however. For one thing, states vary widely on their guidance for teaching sustainability-related topics, if they provide any at all.

“One of the challenges is that sustainability is seen to be controversial, and oftentimes teachers feel like they need to present ‘both sides.’ But this framing is deeply reductive. It implies that there are only two opposing views, when in reality, sustainability challenges are complex, interwoven and best understood through many different viewpoints and types of knowledge,” says Andrea Weinberg, associate professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation.

ASU empowers educators to provide these tools through a variety of programs. The college has long offered a certificate in environmental education, which became so popular that it is now also offered online. This year, the college also launched a graduate certificate in environmental education and now offers a master’s degree with a specialization in education for planetary futures.

Weinberg also co-leads the Global Futures Oriented Research Collective on Education for Sustainability, or G-FORCES, program, funded by the National Science Foundation. The goal is to create a global “network of networks” among anyone involved in sustainability education and to foster collaboration instead of competition.

“Education itself is such a huge enterprise, and usually networks focus on one piece of the puzzle: curriculum, policy or pedagogy. But real transformation happens when we connect the dots — across levels, across contexts, across ways of knowing,” says Iveta Silova, co-lead of G-FORCES and associate dean of global engagement in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation.

Representatives from all the networks met at ASU in fall 2024 and mapped out all the different resources and assets that members bring to the table. Because the initial funding was a planning award, they also developed a joint proposal for additional funding.

“The funding would propel us to move faster,” Silova says. “But even without the funding, the wheels are in motion already. The people we brought together are already co-organizing events in Europe and New York.” 

Learning doesn’t only happen in schools.

Opportunities abound through organizations like museums, libraries, afterschool programs and more. These experiences are known as “informal learning,” and they play an important role.

“For a typical person, they’re only in formal education — like K–12 or university — for a slice of their life. Even during that period, they spend much more time outside of school than in school,” says Rae Ostman, a research professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. “Informal learning gives us the opportunity to bring all sorts of people together — community members, experts, educators, government representatives — to learn together and think about ways to approach big problems.”

Ostman is co-director of the Center for Innovation in Informal STEM Learning at ASU, along with Paul Martin, a research professional in School for the Future of Innovation in Society. In collaboration with community organizations, cultural organizations and educational groups, researchers at the center study practices and approaches to informal learning to make it more effective.

“Some of the things that really work in informal settings are hands-on learning and learner-directed learning. It’s not learning science from a textbook; it’s learning science by doing things. These experiences are also social, where people can learn alongside family, friends and community members,” says Ostman, who previously worked at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and other science centers.

Ostman is leading a project in which teens collaborate to develop an extended reality game that explores climate change. The story-based game, “2175,” explores a future world called Aridium, which suffers from drought and extreme heat. The player — a new water utility worker — faces challenges, navigates conflicts and makes decisions that reveal Aridium’s social, economic and environmental complexity, and the impact of these on its future. 

The young people wanted to create a game that was immersive, encouraged collaboration and sparked conversations about issues they cared about. Originally intended to last two years, the program is now in its third year by request from the students.

“The idea of creating a game from scratch sounded interesting, and the fact that the game is about a climate issue made it sound like something I’d want to be a part of,” says Lian Smith, a member of the design team.

Smith heard about the game from her computer science teacher at Red Mountain High School in Mesa, Arizona. She works on creating environments that the player moves through in the game, particularly one called the Urban Nexus.

“My participation in this program gave me insight into what I liked and didn’t like about game design,” says Smith, now an electrical engineering student in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. “I realized I love building games and making a difference through it, but I would much rather do it for fun than as a career.”

Companies are always looking for ways to improve their business practices, while employees want to keep their skills relevant in a rapidly changing world.

In 2024, the College of Global Futures Executive and Professional Education program reached more than 11,400 learners. Many of them connected with ASU through courses custom-designed for their employers. 

“When they come to us, we can deliver almost anything that they’re interested in,” says Ryan Johnson, executive director of lifelong learning for the college. “We can deliver a two-hour webinar. We can deliver a two-week onsite program.”

He says most companies approach ASU with one of two types of requests. In the first, an organization’s leaders want to upskill their staff about global futures topics. In the second, sustainability officers in an organization want to engage leadership in helping to support their goals.

His office serves as a broker between the organization that’s interested in education and the faculty members who can provide it. Companies approach the ASU team with their specific needs, then the team identifies the best faculty members to develop the curriculum and provide training. For some of the more niche requests, Johnson may need to look outside of the faculty. Often, he finds the right expertise among ASU alumni.

Johnson says when he first arrived at ASU, the term sustainability was largely unknown. That has changed — significantly.

“What I’ve seen in the last handful of years, despite the political winds blowing in every different direction, is there seems to be a continuous and increasing interest in these topics,” he says. “There’s a lot of data that says consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products and services. And so I think companies are increasingly seeing this as an opportunity space, a place where they can not only do well, but they can do good.”

ASU is helping to fill this demand across the entire spectrum of learning, from preparing K–12 students for the future to educating college students to upskilling professionals.

“We live in a complex system,” Kittilson says. “That skill and that approach will guide the graduate for the rest of their career and the way that they approach all kinds of different challenges — connecting those pieces and seeing how, if I solve the problem in this area, what kind of consequences will it have for other pieces here? Could I potentially create more problems than I solve? Will it affect different people in different kinds of ways?”

“I am optimistic about the impact that ASU students will have on the world,” Gourdine says. “There are a lot of things to worry about in the world, but my advice is to stay up to date, stay educated, always continue learning.”