School of Environmental and Sustainability Sciences
Executive Director, TBD
The SESS provides a unique and collaborative scientific research-focused division within Kean University. Through the use of multiple scientific disciplines, students work with scientists in a transdisciplinary manner. The SESS faculty integrates their research into training, education, field and laboratory work, and mentoring of students who are destined for science research or professional careers as consultants and in local, state, and federal government agencies, regional biotechnology, health care, pharmaceutical industries and other private sector areas, the media, sustainability industries, and academia as intertwined with the natural environment and its living systems that interact with society and societal infrastructures.
The SESS has been designed to provide students with professional development opportunities so that they may be able to recognize and reconcile the highly complex and integrated nature of environmental, ecological, and health-related problems, issues, and questions facing the world today and in the future – particularly with regard to air, water, and land systems and their interaction with life and societal systems and how these pertain to sustainability concepts and best practices. Traditional single discipline-trained scientists are not adequately prepared to address such contemporary problems as they do not have the critical multi-scale and trans-disciplinary background and perspective, or the awareness of the needs/concerns of society with respect to the sciences.
Consequently, the SESS Faculty provide a transformative and global model of approach that connects research and education to help students gain strong scientific background, powerful research skills, critical thinking and analytic abilities, and multiple opportunities to practice their communication skills and gain awareness of how these necessarily connect to the global society. SESS program graduates understand and appreciate the connections among all of the basic and applied sciences, and between science and society; have the ability to design, implement, and evaluate research studies; are adept at identifying and resolving local to global issues across the environmental and life systems; and communicating scientific results and conclusions to scientific, public, and governmental private sector and governmental audiences; and as such, will be the next generation of scientists who will be able to address highly complex environmental and biological challenges now and into the future with consideration of sustainability.
The educational objectives are delivered in Degree Programs in Environmental Biology, Earth Sciences (two options of study, including Geoscience and Environmental Science), and Sustainability. For information regarding College/program mission and student learning outcomes please see http://www.kean.edu/KU/CNAHS-Mission-and-SLOs
Statement from the Faculty of SESS
We welcome all students to consider an academic experience within SESS. Our faculty philosophy in SESS is that graduates from our programs should demonstrate a clear understanding of the connections among all the sciences, and between science and society, and be adept at identifying, addressing, discerning, and communicating regional, national, and global issues and solutions across the environmental and sustainability sciences to scientists, the general public, and governmental agencies and decision-makers. We believe these characteristics and outcomes are critical for the success of the next generation of scientists, who must observe, analyze, interpret, and address highly complex environmental challenges now and into the future.