St. Thomas’ new Sustainability minor has been several years in the making, fits with most St. Thomas majors and offers an array of options for students to get involved.

St. Thomas students can choose to add a sustainability minor and build an overall understanding of how living sustainably affects everyone.

“The sustainability minor is designed to be super flexible, so that pretty much anybody should be able to add that to their plan as they’re moving forward through the curriculum,” said Elise Amel, director of the Office of Sustainability Initiatives.

The Office of Sustainability Initiatives requires sustainability courses meet certain qualifications, Amel said. This includes presenting ways for students to think sustainably and require graded work on sustainable topics.

“Naturally, a lot of classes that people will need, can have that component. I mean, sustainability is supposed to be interdisciplinary,” Kara Reardon, co-president of the St Thomas Sustainability Club, said. “Doing that really helps students become aware of how important sustainability is across all disciplines.”

With this criteria, more students can add a sustainability minor.

“The sustainability minor only requires one specific course,” Amel said. “The rest of the courses are flexible based on people’s majors and other minors.”

If students do not want another set of classes for the minor but are still interested in sustainability, they still have several ways they can get involved on campus.

The Sustainability Club’s goal is to inform students about ways they can be sustainable.

“Getting the word out and then kind of show them how they can make a difference and how they can get involved. And then to kind of give them an understanding of what the university is doing and what to do to help the university,” Reardon said.

St. Thomas President Julie Sullivan recently announced a new sustainability strategic plan that will set the university on track to be carbon neutral by 2035. The new plan will combine different university departments.

“Part of that is at a higher level of investing, but I think that the university realizes how important their role is and that the things they do big-scale can really make a difference,” Reardon said.

Mae Macfarlane can be reached at Macf7507@stthomas.edu.