The first official courses of Tech’s Serve-Learn-Sustain initiative are now open for enrollment to all undergraduate students.

Serve-Learn-Sustain provides students with learning and co-curricular opportunities that combine their academic and career interests with a desire to improve the human condition. 

The two courses being offered this semester are team taught and interdisciplinary. Both have a “GT” designation, meaning they can count as a free elective for any major.

Sustainable Community and Systems 

In this course, students will explore sustainability from a systems perspective, including physical/resource balances, ecological/carbon cycle processes, economic/financial practices, political/policy processes, and public participation as they relate to communities in Atlanta and around the world. The course will include case studies in forestry, fracking, climate, and fisheries to demonstrate how these systems interact. 

The class will focus on concepts and methods that students can employ in their chosen career path, whether that is research and design at a utility company, engineering for a major city, or environmental and business advising.

Course Code: GT 2803 HP1, GT 4803 HP1, PUBP HP1, MGT A, or EAS HP1. Students who sign up for any of these courses will be in the same class.

Sustainable Community Principles 

In this course, students will explore community connections to sustainability, focusing on methods for working with community partners such as asset mapping, participatory design, and ethnography. The course will focus on the issues of water and fracking.

Proctor Creek in Westside Atlanta will be used as a case study to connect local issues to global considerations. Instructors come from computer science, interactive computing, architecture, mechanical engineering, and public policy.

The 4803 versions of the class will contain assignments specialized to the discipline, such as developing environmental monitoring technologies or producing a feasibility analysis for Proctor Creek remediation.

Course Code: GT 2803 HP2, PUBP HP2, ARCH 2803, GT 4803 HP2, CS 4803 HP2. Students who sign up for any of these courses will be in the same class.

About Serve-Learn-Sustain 

Along with these courses, which are also part of the new Public Service Pathway, Serve-Learn-Sustain offers projects available for students, faculty, and staff. View a full list of programs and courses here (pdf).

Serve-Learn-Sustain is an institutional effort to equip Georgia Tech students with the skills to learn and serve around the theme of “creating sustainable communities.” The initiative launched in 2015 after being developed as Tech's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) during the Institute’s reaffirmation of accreditation.

Learn more at www.serve-learn-sustain.gatech.edu.