Sustainable Cities Graduate Certificate Program

The Center for Sustainable Cities offers a Graduate Certificate to students completing a 14-unit series of courses.

The goal of the Program is to produce superior scholars prepared for leadership positions in a wide variety of domains: academia, private sector firms, nongovernmental bodies, and public agencies. The Program produces scholars capable of top-quality research and professional practice, who as a result of their training experience can think more flexibly and set different sorts of goals for their careers. They will make their contributions not only within the confines of the research laboratory and peer-reviewed journals, but in the complex professional world of environmental and urban problem solving. To realize this goal, the Sustainable Cities Graduate Certificate Program has five distinct features:

1. Diverse student body: Environmental research is - by its very nature - transdisciplinary, and people of diverse backgrounds bring different yet equally valuable perspectives to collaborative efforts in environmental research and policymaking.
2. Program-specific courses: Program courses thoroughly ground students in fields of scholarship critical to the success of their sustainable cities research undertakings and professional practice.
3. Multidisciplinary research supervision: Students have opportunities to conduct research supervised by multidisciplinary faculty teams, allowing them to grasp fully both the benefits and barriers to such endeavors.
4. State-of-the-art research environment: Students are exposed to state-of-the-art analytical equipment laboratories and field research settings, an objective facilitated by USC's status as a major research university.
5. Emphasis on communications skills: Students are trained in the social processes of environmental research and policy, often engaging in team-based projects and honing their communication skills.

Students seeking to complete the Sustainable Cities Graduate Certificate Program may be new students who wish to apply directly to the program, or students who are pursuing graduate programs in one of many disciplines: engineering, biology, chemistry, earth sciences, economics, geography, political science, public policy, sociology, urban planning, and others.  The Center has many faculty affiliates from a wide range of schools and departments, and fosters an intellectual community through seminars, lecture series and workshops for students and faculty.

Program Requirements

The Sustainable Cities Program requires 16 units of graduate work:

To Apply

Students can be currently matriculated in a USC graduate degree program, or prospective USC students applying for admission to such a program. In addition, individuals not enrolled in or applying to a USC graduate program, are also eligible to apply to the Certificate Program.

Prospective USC students as well as continuing USC students must submit the following documents:

1. Online application for admission to the Sustainable Cities Graduate Certificate — Applications can be found at http://www.usc.edu/admission/graduate
2. Statement of purpose — The statement of purpose should be uploaded into the online application and describe the student's motivation, field of interest, and career goals.
3. Two letters of recommendation — One of the letters of recommendation for continuing students must come from their primary academic advisor. Recommendation letters can be requested through the online graduate application, emailed as a PDF file to kaylor@college.usc.edu or mailed to:

Continuing students are not required to submit transcripts or GRE scores. These documents will be obtained electronically by the Office of Graduate Admission, from their original online graduate application.

If you are a prospective Graduate Certificate student and have not already applied to another USC program, you will need to submit the following additional documents to:

1. Official transcripts from all schools previously attended
2. Results of the GRE General Test — International students must submit TOEFL scores and are expected to achieve a minimum of 600 on this exam.

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