Produce transformative research that offers solutions for more sustainable and vibrant communities, translate the research to action through engagement, and create high impact learning experiences for students.

About Us

The Texas A&M Institute for Sustainable Communities (IfSC) is the university's focal point of interdisciplinary sustainable community research, engagement and high impact service learning.  The Institute is the go-to place for A&M faculty, staff, and students to collaborate on work that crosses sectors and disciplines, advancing solutions that link knowledge to action, and solves critical societal challenges of today and tomorrow.

Working on campus and around the world, we strive to support development of sustainable communities and cities that seek balance between human and environmental needs of people today and of generations to come; provide fair and equitable access to resources to improve the development of human capabilities and wellbeing; engage in civil engagement and participatory, democratic decision-making; and include adaptive capacity to survive, respond and grow in the face of expanding physical, social and economic threats.
 

Core Themes and Strategies

I. Transformative Research

• Nurture and expand collaborative networks of interdisciplinary faculty and students from different colleges and departments.
• Create and sustain research-practitioner teams from around the world to identify and explore core questions of sustainable communities.

 
II. Community Engagement

• Foster and test new and emerging citizen science and participatory methods.
• Cultivate partnerships to build trust and community capacity to translate knowledge to action.

 
III. High Impact Service Learning

• Provide place based urban design studios, capstone courses, and domestic and international field site programs.
• Stimulate development of new interdisciplinary degree and certificate programs.

 

Imagined Outcomes

• Innovations in science and technologies to advance sustainable design, planning and development decision making of communities to achieve healthier and more equitable places, better performing economies, and more resilient built and natural systems.
• Highly developed social networks aimed at building university-community-private sector partnerships for advancing the sustainability of communities and regions.
• New generation of students able to synthesize diverse sources of scientific information and citizen knowledge in ways that help communities solve problems.