Welcome to the Sustainable Community Development Community
The Bachelor of Science in Sustainable Community Development (SCD) offers opportunities to study many aspects of the built environment from a developmental design and planning point of view. Formerly titled Environmental Design, this program was established in 1966 as a pre-professional undergraduate degree. The name change in the fall of 2014 and the curriculum update in the fall of 2017 reflect the evolving nature of our field, dealing with social, built, and natural environments in their interdependence.
Graduates from the BS-SCD program will be prepared to pursue a professional or higher degree in the various fields related to urban design and planning and to make informed and effective development decisions that can have a lasting impact on the social, built, and natural built environments. The core curriculum broadly exposes students to the theories and techniques of planning and design so that they can understand how human and ecological activities can and do shape a landscape and what is involved in the sustainable development of a city and region. It provides the academic background needed for dealing with a wide range of cultural, social, political, economic and ecological aspects in the design and planning of sustainable communities across multiple scales.