Environmental and sustainability education offer meaningful insights and instructive guidance for social-ecological systems. While some of the underlying concepts may be contested and even controversial, we submit that the overarching themes can contribute to healthy, balanced, and resilient individuals, organizations, and communities. Our study investigates student participation in a multidimensional Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program focused on building basic and applied research skill sets anchored in sustainable energy knowledge, and introduces use of a conceptual structure for evaluating outcomes: the Motivation, Core Competency, Research Skills and Sustainability (MCRS) Framework. We focus specifically on student motivation to pursue graduate education and sustainability careers. This is accomplished through an exploratory, multi-strand, case-oriented study, utilizing mixed methods to analyze qualitative and quantitative evaluation data. The literature foundations for the study include undergraduate research experiences and graduate education, learning contexts, and key sustainability education competencies. Findings suggest that the program impacted the desire of participants to attend graduate school and aided in their development of clarity around future sustainability-related career paths. Research concentrates on a group of undergraduates in a STEM-related sustainable energy program as part of an important approach which can be applicable to other programs in differing fields and contexts. Understanding learner motivations with respect to designated competencies and skills is a positive step in creating education systems supportive of equitable and sustainable societies. Expanded use of the MCRS Framework into a logic model for integrated problem solving and evaluating performance outcomes can provide direction for informed planning and decision making toward improved policies, programs, and projects now and into the future.

This study investigates the sustainability-related impacts of the Framing Hope program, an innovative private and nonprofit sector partnership between the nonprofit Good360 and The Home Depot. Specifically, this paper estimates the energy savings, landfill space not filled, and the energy-and landfill-related cost savings associated with the Good360 product philanthropy program with The Home Depot, illustrating that benefits accrue to both company and communities by linkages between environmental, socioeconomic, and energy dimensions. Findings suggest that by redirecting products from the waste stream into usable community resources, considerable landfill space, costs, and energy savings were realized. Product donations can serve as an important platform for sustainable community development and capacity building. This research adds to the growing body of knowledge on environmental performance, corporate giving, and cross-sector partnerships in sustainable and social entrepreneurship.

This study explores the complex cultural, environmental, and economic forces that converge in the United States' Klamath River Basin, also addressing potential solutions. With watershed modifications and construction of dams in the early-twentieth century, ecosystems have been adversely impacted, creating significant challenges for tribes and wildlife, including fish populations. Competing interests and shifting policy priorities have contributed to a highly contested landscape that may be moving toward more sustainable development. Indigenous communities are playing a central role in moving away from long-term conflict among diverse stakeholders over fish and water resources and toward more recent collaborative efforts in planning one of the largest dam removals in history. Two crucial questions are addressed in this paper: (1) What key factors influence environmental governance? and (2) How might proposed dam removal impact socioeconomic conditions? After a brief literature review regarding spatiotemporal conditions, I employ the Social Ecological Systems (SES) framework developed by Ostrom, together with a general economic evaluation, to provide an important preliminary step toward characterizing the multifaceted and interdependent issues. Meaningful variables are identified by unpacking the interactions of governance institutions, actors, and resources within nested settings. Findings from the benefit-cost analysis suggest that the net economic benefits from deconstruction and river restoration may be between $14 to $82 billion. Finally, I recommend further research and use of the Integrative Dam Assessment Modeling (IDAM) tool.

New technologies are not only critical in supporting traditional industrial and military success but also play a pivotal role in advancing sustainability and sustainable development. With the current global economic challenges, resulting in tighter budgets and increased uncertainty, synergistic paradigms and tools that streamline the design and dissemination of key technologies are more important than ever. Accordingly, a proactive and holistic approach can facilitate efficient research, design, testing, evaluation, and fielding for novel and off-the-shelf products, thereby assisting developers, end users, and other diverse stakeholders in better understanding tradeoffs in the defense industry and beyond. By prioritizing mechanisms such as strategic life-cycle environmental assessments (LCEA); programmatic environment, safety, and occupational health evaluations (PESHE); health hazard assessments (HHA); and other innovative platforms and studies early within systems engineering, various nonlethal military technologies have been successfully developed and deployed. These efforts provide a framework for addressing complex environment, safety, and occupational health risks that affect personnel, infrastructure, property, socioeconomic, and natural/cultural resources. Moreover, integrated, comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and iterative analyses involving flexible groups of specialists/subject matter experts can be applied at various spatiotemporal scales in support of collaborations. This paper highlights the Urban Operations Laboratory process utilized for inclusive and transformative environmental analysis, which can translate into advantages and progress toward sustainable systems.

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