Thematic Learning Area Sustainability
The TLA Sustainability compiles Bachelor’s Elective Courses with a central focus on sustainability. Courses within this TLA encourage students to contextualize technological innovation and understand sustainability from a variety of different perspectives. These include human, social, and environmental perspectives, and are related to themes of health, energy, mobility, economics, planning and data science. The aim of this TLA is for students to learn to take responsibility and seek regenerative answers to far-reaching and long-lasting grand societal challenges.
![](https://assets.w3.tue.nl/w/fileadmin/_processed_/2/4/csm_Flowchart%20TLA%20Sustainability_1f9760750d.jpg)
The figure above will help you navigate through the Sustainability TLA.
We recommend different trajectories based on your degree program and based on your own personal interests. If you are a student from Sustainable Innovation (SI), you might already have attended most Sustainability Core Courses, and you may want to consider other TLAs or the other recommended courses. If you are enrolled in any other study program other than IE&IS, we have tailored several other choices based on your fields of interest.
TLA Sustainability Core Courses
In these Core Courses, Sustainability represents the central focus of each individual module. The courses are grouped around the following categories:
Climate Change
The course listed under this category encompasses a comprehensive understanding of the science behind Climate Change and its relation to the pressing societal challenges defining our world and society today.
- Course Code 0SK40 : Understanding the causes and solutions.
Impact of Technology
Comprising three courses, this category delves into the societal implications of technology, encouraging students to contemplate the challenges that technology ameliorates or generates within society.
- Course Code 0SV10: Sustainable Technology in Society
- Course Code 0SV40: Managing sustainable technologies
- Course Code 0SV80: Sustainable Technology in Society (advanced)
Assessment
With two courses under this branch, students are introduced to various tools, including Life Cycle Assessment, for quantifying the environmental impact of products and how these assessments may inform decision-making within organizations.
- Course Code 0SV20: From Industrial Ecology to Circular Economy
- Course Code 0SV140: Assessment to Support Decision Making
Global Sustainability
This category, consisting of three courses, explores the global ramifications of sustainability challenges, including questions of governance.
- Course Code 0SV00: Sustainable Development in a Global Context
- Course Code 0SV130: Global Sustainability and Innovation
- Course Code 0SV150: Global Sustainability in long term perspective
Sustainable Design
This category offers a series of courses prompting students to integrate sustainability considerations into product design.
- Course Code DDB180: ID Green Design Perspectives on Sustainability
- Course Code 7XEUA0: Design for a Sustainable Future
- Course Code 1ZK20: Sustainability Perspectives on Production Innovation
- Course Code DUB210: Designing with more than human worlds