Transforming a popular buzz word into real business

This month, a dozen University of South Florida master's degree students from varying walks of life achieved an important milestone: They became the first graduates of the Patel School of Global Sustainability, having earned a Master of Arts in Global Sustainability.

It was just in early 2010 that USF launched the new School of Global Sustainability, but in our short history we've already seen substantial change in how our world views the management of limited natural resources. This group of new professionals represents another important transformation for the sustainability movement, from trendy cause to serious career path.

"Sustainability" is no longer just a buzz word, nor is it limited to local recycling campaigns or tree-planting ceremonies. Sustainability has become a growing sector in our economy, a valid profession to which people can aspire and a legitimate academic degree that conveys with it all the gravitas of other academic disciplines.

For those of us who believe that we are at a unique moment in time to rethink our interactions with the planet and its people, we know now that an efficient, healthier and more sustainable world is not some idealized vision never to be realized. Even if we still have challenges to face in order to get there, we have committed, well-educated people willing to lead the way.

If you were to get to know these 12 new graduates, you would see they are teachers and health professionals, trained engineers and entrepreneurs interested in creating new businesses and new systems geared toward efficiency and cost-savings. They come from all walks of life and have embraced the concept of interdisciplinary learning and problem-solving to its fullest potential. They've spent months in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia to learn the challenges and great opportunities that present themselves.

As director of the Patel School of Global Sustainability and as an engineer, I have spent my entire career working in countries beset with managing their limited resources and accommodating their growing populations. I've learned to take nothing for granted because I've witnessed the thin margins on which developed and developing nations teeter when it comes to managing their most precious and fundamental resources.

While many people fear that the cause of sustainability naturally brings with it tighter government regulations, they must realize the free-thinking, creative entrepreneur who sees an opportunity to develop new products and systems with the potential for world-wide demand is the ultimate benefactor.

This fall semester, the Patel School of Global Sustainability at USF will add a second focus to its Master of Arts in Global Sustainability, in a program geared at developing sustainability entrepreneurs, the people who will create and bring to market new products that will help revitalize our economy. Our plan is to continue adding to our academic offerings with new focuses on global security, tourism and energy in the coming years. The defining characteristic of all our programs will be their interdisciplinary nature and the integration of basic, natural and social sciences, engineering, health, economics, governance and policy and diversity.

I have no doubt there will come a day when every industry and sector will have incorporated sustainability into its business practices — they will have no choice as the cost of doing business without better management of natural resources will be too expensive. Those students who are "getting in on the ground floor" — as Joy Ingram, one of our new graduates, likes to say when she explains her decision to add a degree in sustainability to her expertise in business and software development — are the ones who will lead the way in this critical and historical transformation.