Why MASS?

In the rising age of the Anthropocene, human activities are generating sustainability crises at unprecedented scales. As local governments, organizations and businesses increasingly recognize the need for alternative practices, individuals who can implement trans-disciplinary and integrative approaches to engaging our society’s problems based on a triple-bottom line frame are sorely needed.

How Does MASS Work?

• Ramapo College’s Master of Arts in Sustainability Studies (MASS) is a ground-breaking program that unites the social sciences, the natural sciences and business to develop leading practitioners in the emerging field of sustainability.
• Students, drawn from diverse backgrounds and experiences, collaborate with faculty and external partners to develop and refine the skills needed to promote sustainability in a variety of organizational, cultural, commercial, and geographical contexts.
• The curriculum is designed so that all coursework feeds into each student’s own capstone project, which is developed in conjunction with faculty mentors.  The primary focus of the capstone project is to help students make the career transformation they most desire.
• This is an intensive program, with a graduate-level workload.  The courses are delivered in a hybrid on-line format. Students come to campus for face-to-face sessions one evening per week, with the remainder of the coursework delivered online.

What Makes MASS Special?

• This is a cohort-based program, with students chosen from very diverse backgrounds, so you learn from one another as much as from the faculty and from the literature.
• Each student’s experience of MASS is unique, because we fit the program to each student’s background and interests.
• The small cohort size allows us to individualize our attention to each student, and to integrate explorations of potential capstone projects into each and every course.
• Diverse faculty from very different disciplines make themselves available for one-on-one work, while helping each student develop their particular interests within each course.

What You’ll Get from MASS

• Graduates of the MASS Program are adept at change management in diverse settings, with a strong grounding in stewardship based on a deep knowledge of best practices that are both pragmatic and transformational.
• You will emerge as a “Tee-shaped” professional — a broad generalist with a deep expertise in some one or two particular areas of specialization.
• By the end of the program, you will be a self-aware and reflective practitioner, with effective change-agent skills, and an ability to embark on an entirely new career path, or indeed to transform any job into a sustainability job.