Mad science

Governments in the region have taken a strong stance on sustainability, but without demand from the private sector, would universities be crazy to offer environmental science?

As the push for environmental awareness gains pace in schools across the UAE, universities in the country are beginning to respond to the need for qualified experts in sustainable practices.

Across the country, some universities have now responded to the environmental imperative by integrating it within their programmes, yet the majority of environmentally-focused programmes on offer are postgraduate degrees, mainly serving to provide expertise to the construction and real estate industries.

Warren Fox, executive director of higher education at Dubai's Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), says there has been "a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of interest across the campuses in Dubai, but we have not yet come across any specific institution or campus where that is their primary programme."

Fox hopes that students "will seek out those programmes that at least have a component on environmental awareness and sustainability" and predicts the "incorporation of these types of issues into the existing curriculum."

Heriot-Watt University in Dubai is one such institution integrating sustainability into its degrees. Dr Essem Al Haj, head of the School of Built Environment at Heriot-Watt, says that the issue of sustainability features in all the university's courses.

"We look at the impact of sustainability on real estate in Dubai and the UAE; we talk about it in project management. We are doing five or six dissertations focusing specifically on sustainability, from issues relating to waste management, to the relation between design and sustainability."

The university is planning to offer a whole master's programme in environmental sustainability, says Al Haj, and the subject will be more fully integrated into existing programmes in the future.

The British University in Dubai, meanwhile, runs masters degrees in Sustainable Design for the Built Environment, a course which integrates architecture and engineering principles to provide sustainable design solutions.

In conjunction with the Emirates Green Building Council, the university also offers LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) workshops for construction industry professionals.

Other industry-specific programmes, however, have not completely ignored the environment. Zayed University offers a major in environmental health as part of its health sciences programme, while Middlesex University Dubai incorporates alternative tourism and sustainability into its bachelor of tourism degree.

But, according to Dr Sandra Knuteson, assistant professor of environmental science at the American University of Sharjah (AUS), programmes which incorporate, rather than focus on the environment in their curricula, don't give a balanced picture of what sustainability is about.

"You can learn about the environment in biology, in construction, but you don't really learn the management, you don't learn the human impact of it."

AUS's bachelor of environmental science degree - the only undergraduate programme of its type in the UAE, focuses on science, turning out graduates who have a global understanding of the problems they're trying to solve.

If an architect designs a green building to protect the ecosystem, she continues, "they have to understand what the ecosystem is, otherwise they're not protecting it with the appropriate measures." Likewise, if professionals read environmental reports relating to their field and don't understand the science, then "they're going to be lacking something."

AUS's programme puts priority on "teaching the science," Knuteson says. "We give students some experience with management ideas, with environmental policy, but environmental issues aren't just construction. It's a hot topic in Dubai, but it's not the only important issue there."

The programme at AUS looks at international environmental concerns, and puts them in a local context. "We have sewage treatment classes, where students go out to waste treatment areas, classes about ecology, desertification, and the marine ecosystem. The examples we have in class are very diverse."

Yet the undergraduate programme, she says regretfully, is undersubscribed. School leavers don't usually consider environmental science as a path to a well-paid career, and parents are much more likely to push their children towards more "respectable" degrees such as engineering or architecture.

But lack of interest in the programme does not reflect the job opportunities available to its graduates. "I've noticed a growth in the job possibilities," Knuteson says, referring particularly to Emiratis.

"I do not know of a single student who did not get a job once they finished. Just this summer, we had one Emirati graduate, and Nakheel and Dubal were fighting over her, so she was going between them and trying to figure out which one would give her the best opportunities."

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