Global Masters in Sustainable Development Practice (Full-Time)

Learn how to integrate policy, scholarship, ethics, and participatory practice to achieve sustainable development goals.

Please note that SIT will make every effort to maintain its programs as described. To respond to emergent situations, like COVID-19, however, SIT may have to change or cancel programs.

Why a Master's in Sustainable Development Practice?

Grounded in SIT’s unique brand of experiential, place-based learning, explore how global health crises, economic inequality, natural resource degradation, and political and ethnic conflict are interconnected, requiring a new generation of highly educated, innovative, multidisciplinary development practitioners.

Starting in Quito, Ecuador, a city high in the Andes, you will explore the challenges of one of the most biodiverse countries in the world while learning from faculty, guest lecturers, and experts in the field. Study ecological impacts, forest regeneration, sustainable land practices, and conservation on an excursion to northern Ecuador’s patchwork of cloud forests. Excursions may also include trips to the coast.

Spend your second semester in Africa, splitting your time between Cape Town in South Africa, and the smaller river city of Lilongwe, Malawi. For 15 weeks, you will engage in comparative analyses of how design thinking, monitoring and evaluation, economics, resource management, health policy, and trade are affected by local needs, diverse livelihood practices, cultural identities, and varied histories of colonization and resistance. Though based in the city, you will examine sustainable and regenerative development practices in urban, peri-urban, and rural locations during site visits and fieldwork.

In the final semester of this one-year program, you will spend 10 to 12 weeks in a full-time practicum in a role and location of your choice, drawing from SIT’s worldwide professional networks. You will gain the experience and hands-on skills you need to attain your career goals and will also complete a capstone paper.

The SIT Master’s in Sustainable Development Practice offers you a chance to obtain professional skills while conducting research and fieldwork in a highly competitive global environment. As a graduate, you’ll be prepared to integrate policy, scholarship, ethics, participatory practice, and lifelong learning to achieve sustainable, global development goals in the 21st century.

Program Sites

Quito, Ecuador

In Quito, Ecuador’s capital, learn development practices in a multicultural, stratified society that has experienced political upheaval affecting multiple systems. Witness a dominant civilization in crisis, providing key opportunities for you to study how global health, economics, and culture impact the quality of life in urban and indigenous communities.

Excursion highlights may include:

• Mashpi Shungo Rainforest Biodiversity Reserve
• Valle de Intag, Cotacachi

Cape Town, South Africa

The legislative capital of South Africa, Cape Town is a world-renowned port city, famous for its natural beauty and is the recipient of many international travel awards. It is also regarded as the most unequal city, within the world’s most unequal country. Because of its history, politics, geography, and natural resources, Cape Town is a compelling location from which to examine the tensions, contradictions, and consequences of the global development agenda, and allows for deep insight into the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals within complex socio-economic contexts. Learn from case studies delving into the core issues of development practice, such as community analysis and assessment; local participation in project design and implementation; and the methods and tools for monitoring and evaluation.

Excursion highlights may include:

• Visit a host of NGOs or community-based organizations working in formal and informal urban environments.
• The field-based practice of design thinking with real-world challenges.
• Arniston, the last historical fishing village in South Africa (and a heritage site).

Lilongwe, Malawi

Malawi will provide you with an ideal case study for analyzing the ongoing and occasionally contentious discussions among members of government, civil society, and local citizens on development initiatives. Of particular significance to your master’s degree will be the exploration of the ways in which cultural traditions, drought, ecology, migration, and international aid regimes affect agricultural enterprises and natural resource management in an environment of increasing climatic uncertainty.

Excursion highlights may include:

• Permaculture Paradise Institute, Mchinji
• One-week rural homestay, Ntcheu District