NCSS Undergraduate Concentration

Housed in and administered by the Liberal Arts division, NCSS is an all-college interdisciplinary concentration that allows students to create their own pathway of study drawn from the fields of: sustainable design, the environmental sciences and social sciences, the environmental humanities, social and environmental justice studies and the fine arts. Courses that can earn NCSS credit and are open to NCSS concentrators are identified as such in the RISD course catalog. All concentrators will complete a 3-credit core course in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies: The NCSS Core Seminar.

Typically, concentrators meet or communicate with their concentration coordinator once or twice a year to discuss course options and to update their records. NCSS concentrators may pre-register for a select range of Liberal Arts courses that are identified in the RISD course catalog with the NCSS course tag. Concentration coordinators will contact all concentrators with the relevant instructions shortly before the official registration period. This pre-registration option is available in fall and spring only.

Students who complete the NCSS undergraduate concentration are prepared to:

• identify Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies as an inherently interdisciplinary pursuit by synthesizing knowledge from the humanities, sciences, social sciences and art and design to analyze a variety of environmental challenges.
• apply this interdisciplinary knowledge to their studio practices in order to develop and create innovative art- and design-based responses to complex environmental challenges.
• explain, analyze and critically evaluate a diversity of theoretical frameworks, methodologies and making practices—and their intersections.
• describe and apply key concepts and debates underlying theories of sustainability.
• formulate a critical understanding of and be able to communicate the ways aesthetics, objects, systems and language interact with culture, power relations and institutions to shape our perceptions of and relationships with the natural and built world.
• demonstrate an ability to assess the ethical implications of the theories and methodologies discussed and identify, evaluate and articulate their own socio-ecological identity and positionality within them.

In order to declare your intention to concentrate in Nature–Culture–Sustainability Studies, please complete the form below which will be submitted to the NCSS coordinator. Copies will be sent to the Registrar and the head of your major department. There is no penalty for withdrawing from the concentration.

Course petitioning

NCSS undergraduate concentrators who would like credits earned in courses not designated NCSS to be considered toward fulfilling concentration requirements may submit a course petition to your NCSS coordinator. You must demonstrate and document to their satisfaction that your work is substantively informed by the themes of the concentration, and engages meaningfully with topics such as such as, but not limited to:

• living systems
• biomaterials, biodesign and bioart
• environmental politics, policy and law
• animal rights and interspecies coexistence
• ethical and sustainable supply chains
• landscape systems and design
• reuse, adaptation and upcycling
• environmental storytelling
• speculative ecofutures
• science communication
• environmental data-driven art and visualization
• the intersection of race, ethnicity, indigeneity, gender and the environment
• Traditional Ecological Knowledge
• community-based social and environmental impact design.

Credits earned through Brown University classes may qualify for NCSS credit. You may petition for inclusion of these classes by submitting a request to the concentration coordinator that includes the course description and other relevant information.

You may also petition their concentration coordinator for the inclusion of studio classes from a non-major studio elective by virtue of the way the student chooses to do the work in that studio. If the content of your work reflects the learning goals of the NCSS concentration, then the course’s six credits may qualify for NCSS credit. The minimum grade for NCSS credit of B- still applies.

Course transferring

NCSS concentrators may transfer a maximum of six credits from other universities to fulfill your concentration requirements. You must have received at least a B- in the course in order for us to accept the course credits, or a passing grade in the case of universities that do not issue letter grades.

All four-credit courses from other universities will transfer into the NCSS undergraduate concentration as three-credit courses.

Whether courses completed at other colleges and universities meet the standards of the NCSS undergraduate concentration is at the discretion of concentration coordinators.

To petition for RISD course credits to count towards the NCSS undergraduate concentration, or to transfer credits earned at other institutions, please fill out the course petition form linked below.