Sustainable Development with Industrial Practice MSc - 2026/7

Other information

The School of Engineering / Centre for Environment and Sustainability is committed to developing graduates with strengths in Employability, Digital Capabilities, Global and Cultural Capabilities, Sustainability, and Resourcefulness and Resilience. This programme is designed to allow students to develop knowledge, skills, and capabilities in the following areas:

Employability: professionally focused learning that nurtures career ready graduates permeate the programme through its use of speakers from industry and government. Employability is also developed via site visits in some modules, such as the Environmental Auditing and Management Systems module, which are designed to give students practical examples of who to apple their developing knowledge and skills. Some modules, such as the Environmental Science and Society module, give students the opportunity to work in multi-disciplinary teams.

During the first year on this programme students take an Employability module and in their second year of this programme students undertake an extended industrial placement in industry to gain practical employability skills by working for a company or organisation in a sustainability related role.

This programme is accredited by Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA). IEMA provides a route for its members to achieve Chartered Environmentalist status. If students complete four specified modules (Sustainable Development Applications, Environmental Science and Society, Environmental Law and Environmental Auditing and Management Systems), plus the overall MSc degree, then they are eligible for Graduate Membership of IEMA upon graduation.

Global and cultural capabilities, intercultural awareness and informed views on global, social and ethical issues are required skills for any effective sustainability practitioner, with the MSc¿s modules designed specifically to develop these capabilities. Class discussions which are built into almost every module on this programme expose students to a variety of global and cultural perspectives due to both the diversity of students taking this MSc programme and the breadth of topics and perspectives covered.

Digital capabilities: Throughout the programme students learn to navigate and utilise the University of Surrey¿s Virtual Learning Environment (SurreyLearn) and other digital resources and online databases to aid their learning and undertake research. For example, the Life Cycle Assessment module teaches students how to use SimaPro LCA software and to access the EcoInvent database. Students are taught how to use digital technologies for access to digital sources of data, data collection and analysis. Students also develop their virtual meeting and digital working skills via the use of virtual meeting software for some tutorial sessions and seminars on this programme.

Resourcefulness and resilience: In the taught modules students are challenged to consider how different individuals, groups and societies respond to the opportunities, challenges, difficulties and setbacks they encounter when seeking to implement sustainable development. Students are encouraged to reflect upon these resourcefulness and resilience strategies as they develop their own personal resourcefulness and resilience strategies.
Students are challenged to be resourceful in their data gathering and analysis as they develop their qualitative and quantitative research skills when completing their module assessments and when doing their dissertation. Dissertation supervisors encourage students to think creatively and be resourceful when developing their dissertation research.

Sustainability permeates all of the modules in this programme since the programme as a whole is seeking to create skilled sustainability professionals. Thus, all of the modules included on the programme are included because they provide students with either the subject knowledge, analytical, transferable or practical skills expected of sustainability professionals. This includes learning about subject-specific theories and concepts such as systems thinking, ecological economics and life cycle analysis. It includes frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and knowledge of issues such as climate change. Depending upon their module selection and dissertation focus, students also learn to use analytical tools such as life cycle analysis, and research tools such as surveying, interviewing, focus groups, and quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The broad range subject areas, analytical tools and skills developed in the programme mean that students should be effective sustainability practitioners upon graduation.