INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – Sustainability students at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe kicked off the new semester last month, with the new Sustainability Certificate program in just its second cohort. Five students graduated in Fall 2024 with the first cohort, and five more are set to complete the program again in spring. 

The coursework is modeled after the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, in order to answer real-world questions in the basin and region. The program is designed like a study abroad program, giving students based on the Reno campus the opportunity to spend a full semester at the Wayne L. Prim campus in Incline Village. This allows students to fully immerse themselves in their research, much of which is local and in the field. 

The program is new and growing, and the hands-on research is driving studies with a direct impact and results for the Tahoe basin. In the first open semester of the Sustainability Certificate, nobody enrolled, so spring marks just the second active semester of the program. Interest in the Tahoe campus is growing, however. 

“The number of students that came up from Reno to spend the semester here went up by about 50%,” said Brian Frost, Assistant Dean at UNR Lake Tahoe. “Small numbers, but we have a dozen or so Reno students that are spending a semester up here.”

UNR took over the Tahoe campus from Sierra Nevada University in 2022, so is in the beginning phases of integrating the campus itself into overall programming. Other programs with a local focus in the works include an art minor called “Art, Land and the Environment,” which will involve at least one semester on the Tahoe campus, said Frost. 

“At least one of the courses will be done in conjunction with the Nevada Museum of Art,” he added. The UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center is also based on the Prim campus, offering Sustainability students another avenue for resources. 

Many of the courses offered through the Tahoe campus, specifically the 12-credit Sustainability Certificate, are “place-based classes,” said Frost. “They will go out and go for a hike and look for the pica or look for signs of them,” he said. “They will look at the trees and how they’re performing and what impacts they can see on the trees, and so there really is a connection to the location.”

“It’s often a very experiential way of teaching,” he added. Two large research vessels are additionally under construction and are expected to arrive in Tahoe for use in the lake within the coming year. 

Kayla Maldonado Chirino, a second-semester sophomore who was in the first cohort of Sustainability Certificate recipients, said she enjoyed the program so much she chose to stay at the Tahoe campus for an additional semester. Maldonado Chirino, who is originally from Reno, said the course gave her a deeper connection to and understanding of the region. “We went to the salt flats and up to Mount Rose,” she said. “We would just study and memorize our localized species, what are invasive and native to the area.”

“So when you’re moving around Nevada, or you’re going from Truckee to Tahoe City, or you’re moving around Incline, you can see how what you’re learning in class applies.”

Local topics discussed in the course also include automobile dependence in the basin, and how those emissions impact the local ecology.