What is it about?
This study describes how Virginia Tech designed a new undergraduate program—the Sustainable Systems Science (S3) major—to prepare students for emerging sustainability-related careers. The study presents a curriculum-design framework that brings together three complementary sources of evidence: sustainability competency frameworks, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and labor-market information from the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET database. By examining the knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with sustainability-related occupations alongside established sustainability competencies, the authors developed an interdisciplinary curriculum connecting environmental, economic, technological, and social systems. The approach helps link academic learning with evolving professional expectations while preserving the broader educational goals of a university curriculum. The framework provides an example that other universities can adapt when developing or updating sustainability-focused programs and seeking stronger connections among curriculum design, student learning, and changing workforce needs.
Featured Image
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Universities are under growing pressure to prepare students for sustainability challenges and rapidly evolving careers, yet curriculum development often treats academic sustainability competencies and workforce information as separate sources of evidence. This study is distinctive because it brings these perspectives together. It combines established sustainability competencies, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and labor-market information from the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET database within a single curriculum-design framework. This makes it possible to consider both the broader educational goals of sustainability and the knowledge, skills, and abilities associated with emerging professional roles. The work is timely as universities seek to modernize curricula, respond to changing student and employer expectations, and prepare students to work across environmental, economic, technological, and social systems. Beyond Virginia Tech, the framework provides a practical model that other institutions can adapt when developing or revising sustainability-related programs, helping them make curriculum decisions that are more evidence-informed, transparent, and responsive to changing workforce needs.
Perspectives
For me, this publication represents more than a curriculum-design study. It reflects several years of collaborative work to rethink how we prepare students for a rapidly changing sustainability landscape. This work is especially meaningful to me because much of the curriculum-development process took place during my time as Department Head of Sustainable Biomaterials at Virginia Tech. In that role, I had the opportunity to work closely with faculty and colleagues as we considered how the department’s undergraduate programs could evolve in response to changing student interests, sustainability challenges, and professional opportunities. One of the most important lessons from this process was that curriculum development benefits from looking beyond traditional academic boundaries. Sustainability challenges are inherently interconnected, and students need opportunities to understand environmental, economic, technological, and social dimensions together. At the same time, I believe universities should pay attention to how the knowledge and skills we teach relate to evolving professional opportunities without allowing labor-market data alone to determine the curriculum. I am particularly pleased that this study documents a practical approach for bringing these perspectives together. My hope is that the framework will be useful not only for the continued development of Sustainable Systems Science at Virginia Tech, but also for colleagues at other institutions who are considering how to make sustainability education more interdisciplinary, evidence-informed, and responsive to a changing world.
Ching-Hsun Huang
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Integrating labor-market data and sustainability competencies: a framework demonstrated through the sustainable systems science major at Virginia Tech, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, October 2026, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/ijshe-11-2025-1424.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
