Chicago Curriculum on Climate and Sustainable Growth

A Comprehensive Foundation in Climate and Energy

The Chicago Curriculum is comprised of a set of eight foundational courses that grapple with the climate and sustainable growth challenge from multiple perspectives, including:

• Climate Science
• Climate and Energy Economics
• Politics and Law of Energy and Climate
• Energy Technology and Energy Systems
• Humanistic Approaches to the Climate Problem
• Climate Impacts and Adaptation
• International Perspectives on Energy and Climate
• Global Perspectives

Concentrations

Building from this foundation, the Chicago Curriculum offers students the opportunity to specialize in areas of interest, such as climate science, energy and climate finance, and energy policy.

Experiential Learning

Fostering learning beyond the classroom is an essential component of what makes the Chicago Curriculum truly unique. Therefore, the curriculum includes an experiential learning course, meant to be offered during the September term. The course brings students face-to-face with the climate and sustainable growth challenge from differing perspectives, including families living in rural India and sub-Saharan Africa, policymakers in Europe and China, and energy producing communities.

As a student, if you are to understand not just the world but yourself, there is only a limited understanding that you can get on campus. But should you go abroad and learn in Africa, in Europe, in Asia, then those environments and those academic settings almost act as a mirror in which you begin to recognize yourself, the limitations of your point of view, and how other people think in a way that’s very hard to do sitting in a classroom in Hyde Park.”

Bala Srinivasan, Senior Advisor, Asia, Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth

Modular Design for Adoptability

A carefully developed modular design allows the Chicago Curriculum to be adopted by other universities and used in multiple contexts. In this way, the Curriculum not only fundamentally alters students’ understanding of the world’s climate and energy challenge and the solutions needed to address it, but also profoundly and globally alters climate and energy education and ultimately the workforce through an engaged network of domestic and foreign universities.