Sustainability & the Built Environment

Find Purpose in Facilitating Prosperity for People & Planet

The Sustainability and the Built Environment (SBE) Program at the College of Design, Construction and Planning (DCP) offers pre-collegiate camps, undergraduate and graduate degrees, and global experiential learning across a unique interdisciplinary approach that bridges the broader principles and practices from other DCP programs in a more generalist framework. SBE helps students find purpose in facilitating prosperity for people and planet. Together, we are building better human habits and habitats.

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Our Perception of Past, Present, & Future

Upon hindsight, we honor our past heritage. With insight, we elevate the solutions hidden in the present problems. Through foresight, we foster adaptive capacity for the uncertain changes and challenges emerging from a future embedded in the seeds we plant today.

Our Commitment to Consilience

Striving for consilience (a transdisciplinary unity of knowledge), we perceive and progress through a four dimensional lens of livelihoods: ecological (planet), social (people), cultural (purpose), and economic (prosperity). In learning, SBE students leverage the applied sustainability and resilience science, alongside the collective change frameworks, established or enhanced by institutional innovators and leaders, including (though not limited to) the following:

BuildingGreen Knowledge Base
Esri Geodesign
Green Protocols
- International Living Future Institute
- International WELL Building Institute
- Sustainable SITES Initiative
- U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
- And others…
Project Drawdown
Regeneration
Stockholm Resilience Centre
United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Our Declaration of Interdependence

SBE empowers students to nurture nature’s regenerative economy and protect our planetary safe operating space (SOS) from the externalities of the existing extractive economy. We act on behalf of our collective humanity and all of the other life forms with whom we have co-evolved. In a “Fuller” spirit, we strive…

To make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.
– R. Buckminster Fuller via BFI

Learn More @ Why SBE Here & Now?

SBE Program | Major & Minor

We offer both a major and a minor undergraduate degree and welcome students who select us as incoming freshmen, find us through a change of majors, or join us as a transfer student.

Learn More About Our Undergraduate Degree

The SBE major is a four-year, 120-credit hours degree program leading to Bachelor of Science in Sustainability and the Built Environment (BSSBE). The SBE minor is offered to other majors across campus with a requirement of 15 credit hours completed.

Major in SBE > UF Catalog

Minor in SBE > UF Catalog

SBE Program | Specializations & Disciplinary Domains

The SBE major degree offers two specializations and three degree disciplinary domains.

Interdisciplinary > UF Catalog

For additional context about the potential professional pathways in this specialization, visit our Green Protocols and Systems Thinking discipline pages.

Geodesign > UF Catalog

For additional context about the potential professional pathways in this specialization, visit our Geodesign discipline page.

MISD Program | For Professionals Returning & Undergraduates Combining

Starting Fall 2022, the SBE program launches the Master of Integrated Sustainable Development (MISD) graduate degree program. This exciting new course of study is available to existing professionals returning to school for a graduate degree and current undergraduate students looking to combine their BSSBE + MISD degrees in an accelerated path.

Master of Integrated Sustainable Development (MISD)

Combined Degree Education

The SBE Advisory Board connects our students and faculty to practicing sustainability professionals across a multitude of planning, design, engineering, construction, management and related industries working to manifest and manage our built environment for the quadruple bottom line of planet, people, purpose, and prosperity.

Learn More About Our SBE Advisory Board

How to Navigate Our Website

Our web presence answers common questions and sheds light on the why, who, what, where, when, and how that animate our story and lay a pathway for your journey as a change agent. We welcome all weavers as we seek the wisdom and strength to walk through the bottleneck of the Anthropocene to a flourishing place on the other side.

Find purpose in facilitating prosperity for people and planet. SBE the change…

Our Story

SBE Purposeful

Learn why SBE here and now as you explore our purpose and program parameters.

See Our Perspective

SBE Collective

Follow who makes SBE move as you meet our faculty, staff, students, and collaborators.

Meet Our Community

Your Journey

SBE Empowered

Explore what SBE offers learners at many levels through empowered educational opportunities across various life stages.

Seize the Day

SBE Determined

Determine where to next as you realize your best self through active engagement on campus and within our community.

Find Your Way

SBE Connected

Connect with our people and partners as you learn how to participate in, donate to, and collaborate with our program as we celebrate mutual success. Our most ambitious connections take place in our SBE Advisory Board.

Have Your Say

News, Events & Insights

When Sustainability and the Built Environment (SBE) happens, we are there for the progress. Explore our present and past posts to follow program news, track events, and glean insights on the path to a better tomorrow, together.

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