Campuswide Honors student and third-year Computer Science and Business Administration major Ran “Rango” Gu gives a testimonial on behalf of Sustainable Societies:
“Working through the Cool Campus Challenge, I realized that I already know about or am already doing most of the ways to reduce my footprint that the Challenge proposes, and I was well aware of the many ongoing initiatives to fight climate change and counter environmental injustice that the Challenge showcases. This didn’t surprise me at all, thanks to Dr. Ted Wright, director of UCI’s Campuswide Honors Program, and his (and I quote) “baby”: the two-year, six-quarter-long course sequence called Sustainable Societies.
As part of the first cohort to ever take this sequence, I was quite hesitant in the beginning. After all, I was going to dedicate almost two years (about a tenth of my life!) to this topic. But now in my last quarter, I think this was one of the best decisions I have made at UCI.
In the new millennium, we can no longer turn a blind eye to sustainability. I think a basic understanding of the social and natural sciences behind this topic is an integral part of literacy in today’s world, and what it means to be an informed citizen making informed choices. Besides, this is the world which I, and others of my generation, will inherit, and this is the future which we will have the responsibility of creating.
Because of how relatively recent and how interdisciplinary all of these issues are, it is incredibly difficult to construct a cohesive narrative that fully examines sustainability in all its complexity. But Dr. Wright did what needed to be done, and spear-headed one of the first programs in the nation to systematically educate students about sustainability. By pulling together top faculty members from across multiple schools, Dr. Wright produced a practical, stimulating, and must-take course on Sustainable Societies!
I also want to thank all of the professors in the sequence for an amazing course: professors Holton and Jenks in F17; professors Ferguson, Gui, Morlighem and Huxman in W18+S18; professors Campos and Jenkins in F18; and professors Davis, Garde, Runnerstrom, and Schoenung in W19+S19. Thank you!”