What is the program focus?

The Doctor in Sustainability (DSus) is a professional doctorate program that aims to produce graduates who can develop research-based solutions to persistent sustainability challenges. It will address the need for professionals with advanced academic training who are expected to develop transformative research approaches to address wicked problems based on practical issues in their profession.  The threats and complex challenges that human society is facing now calls for a pluridisciplinary approach that transcends  traditional solutions, promotes intersectoral cooperation and collaboration and takes on intergenerational equity perspectives.   

The DSus will marry the theoretical frameworks from academic community and the practical knowledge and experiences drawn from the field and work-base setting and with enough flexibility to strengthen the students’ proficiency in the pillars of sustainability — economic, social, and environmental. By providing a shared learning environment for the practitioners and academics working on sustainability, this program shall allow for co-design and co-creation of knowledge that promotes partnerships and collaborative action not only in academic courses but also in actual application in the field through their dissertation.   

The program aims to produce graduates who:

1. have a clear grasp of sustainability worldviews;
2. can make sense and anticipate complex problems;
3. develop innovative, participatory and research-based solutions to problems which do not seem to have obvious optimal solutions using pluridisciplinary approaches;
4. link and apply use-inspired knowledge in adaptive settings;
5. have the strategic competence to manage transitions by designing, facilitating and implementing interventions and transformative strategies; and 
6. cognizant of the relationships across systems scales and their implications to intergenerational equity

The program aims to produce professional doctorates who are: analyst, facilitator, communicator, integrator, negotiator, and translator of pluridisciplinary perspectives and is designed to accommodate different disciplines, philosophies of science and methodologies, as long as these lead to innovative solutions that can contribute to a transition of societal, institutional and regulatory structures towards sustainability. 

Program Goals

The Doctor in Sustainability program aims to develop graduates who are able to:

1. Demonstrate highly advanced systematic knowledge and skills in highly specialized and/or complex interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field of learning;
2. Utilize of complex research/creative work and/or professional practice and/or the advancement of learning with full independence in individual work and/or in teams of interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary setting; 
3. Apply a more complex setting that demands leadership in research and creative work with strategic value added; and
4. Apply a significant level of expertise-based autonomy and accountability to professional leadership for innovation, research, and/or development management in highly specialized or interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary fields.
5. Evaluate the complexity of sustainability issues and challenges in institutional, local, national, regional and global settings from the lenses of sustainability concepts and frameworks;
6. Design pluridisciplinary, intersectoral, and intergenerational equity-informed sustainability frameworks, models and systems that can be used in analyzing and evaluating actual scenarios, managing transitioning to sustainability and developing sustainability transition pathways;
7. Generate transformative, innovative and context-based solutions and institutional support systems in addressing a wide range of wicked and complex global societal and environmental challenges;
8. Demonstrate advanced leadership in professional sustainability research settings through management of pluridisciplinary teams, informed, reflective, and participatory decision making, and collaborative partnerships.

For further details regarding the program, you may visit the FMDS DSus Program Brochure.