Community

• You are passionate about domestic or international development, environmental quality, or sustainability
• You would like a problem-oriented, customizable major that blends together economics, sociology, and other disciplines to give you a wide skillset
• You want small classes where professors know your name, and that emphasize discussion
• You are a "people person" and want a career that betters people's lives
• You want a solid foundation for going to law school or graduate school

Community, Environment, and Development is a multidisciplinary program that brings together economics and sociology to help students understand and address issues related to economic and community development, the environment and natural resources, and international development, and the critical interactions between these, both locally and globally. The major emphasizes critical thinking, core knowledge, and skills required for professional success working on community-level issues. Foundation (Level I) courses introduce students to key concepts in economics and sociology, and examine how these disciplines contribute to the basic content knowledge encompassing community and economic development and environmental economics and sociology. Level II courses build on the Foundation courses by extending the content knowledge to address the interrelationship between environment and natural resources and community and economic development. Coursework in Methods, Quantification and Communication is also required, including methods and techniques such as Geographical Information Systems and Geographical Information Analysis, statistics and survey research methods. Finally, students select among four options:

1. Community and Economic Development,
2. Environmental Economics and Policy,
3. International Development,
4. Social and Environmental Responsibility.

Students specialize in an option that further allows them to develop skills and competencies matching their specific education and career goals. Around 40 percent of students completing the program continue on to graduate school or law school, while others choose employment after graduation.

• Critical Thinking Skills and Scholarship: Read, interpret and critically analyze a broad range of community, environment and development sources.
  • Use a combination of economic and sociological analytical tools to understand and explain complex community, environment, and development issues, including their contested and uncertain nature.
  • Explain community political and power structures, social dynamics, inequity, diverse value systems, ideologies, and cultures.
  • Use basic economic concepts of scarcity, choice, supply, and demand to explain typical community, environment, and development problems.
  • Describe important community, environment, and development policy issues occurring at community, state, national, and international levels.
  • Explain the connections between individuals, households, communities, and regions in a globalizing world, including the centrality of human interdependence and relationships for understanding community, environment, and development issues.
  • Integrate and synthesize these Learning Objectives, recognizing their interdependence and connections.
• Research Skills: Think systemically and construct logical arguments in research design and research activities.
  • Identify and describe one's power and privilege in applied research and how these affect research design and process, findings, implications and impacts in the community.
  • Describe the benefit of using research methodologies based upon community perspectives and knowledge, and the implications of these methodologies for selection and use of appropriate research methods.
  • Use basic data collection research skills, including interviews, focus groups, and surveys.
  • Use basic qualitative and quantitative research skills, including coding, descriptive secondary data analysis, and bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses.
  • Use basic mapping analysis skills.
  • Access, download, analyze and interpret common economic and social secondary data.
  • Measure inequality using quantitative and social qualitative measures.
  • Gain experience in designing and conducting community-based participatory research.
• Team and Community Engagement Skills: Work effectively as a member of a team.
  • Understand and gain experience with community engagement strategy and process.
  • Explain the politics of engagement, and engagement as politics and power shifting, and its implications for CED-related work.
  • Distinguish between democracy as the everyday politics of civic or public work involving citizens versus partisan party politics.
  • Use methods and techniques for effective community engagement, including involving inclusion/representation of the multiple facets of the community, facilitation, meeting management, SWOT analysis, and brainstorming.
  • Understand allyship and advocacy work and use skills and sensitivity to work effectively with and across varied groups and individuals.
• Communication & Civic Skills: Discuss ideas confidently and freely in an academic fashion, both with faculty and with other students.
  • Describe the power of narrative, including how narrative is used to shape perceptions of an issue.
  • Determine appropriate methods to develop strong and inclusive communication with stakeholders, building greater levels of understanding, engagement, and equity.
  • Write clear and coherent research papers and essays, appropriate for the audience.
  • Competently and confidently make oral presentations in diverse professional and applied situations.
  • Develop, practice and hone active listening skills.
  • Understand, gain experience with, and develop capability to use questions to communicate ideas, understand community issues, and individual, group, and community capacity.
• Equity & Inclusion: Describe how inequity can hinder the emergence of community and community capacity, the influence that the history of inequity currently has on individuals and community, and how inequality currently manifests itself.
  • Describe how societal outcomes and the choices available to individuals are shaped by human interdependence, politics and public choice, and power.
  • Use normative ethics and social science tools to identify inequalities at the community level, diagnose their nature, and develop inclusive and engaged approaches for overcoming these.

If you are a first year student applying to Penn State:

Click Apply to start your Penn State application. Before starting, you can also review the Applying Online Worksheet for more details and helpful hints about the application.

Your application work can be saved at each step of the process by clicking the Save and Continue button at the bottom of the page. This feature will allow you to move back and forth within the application or log off and return to complete your application at a later time.

After completing your Academic History, you will need to provide your Self-Reported Academic Record (SRAR). As you begin the SRAR process, a new window will open allowing you to complete your SRAR. SRAR will focus on your high school coursework. It is important that this step is a complete and accurate representation of your school record. Therefore, have a copy of your secondary school records available as you complete your SRAR. You will need to enter every class and every grade earned for the last three years, as well as those classes in progress.

After completing your SRAR, you will be directed back to the Penn State application in order to complete the Program of Study portion of the application. Here, you will indicate your desired starting semester, your intended program of study, and your starting and ending campus. For further details on how to complete this portion based on your applicant type, please see the steps to apply for first-year students.

After completing this section of the application, you will provide some additional information, an activities resume, and a personal statement. You will be able to paste in this information from other sources, but note that the formatting may not always paste in as intended.

If you are a transfer student applying to Penn State:

All international transfer students will be required to submit official high school transcripts in order to complete the application. International transfer students will not complete the Self-Reported Academic Record (SRAR) for either their high school or college coursework.

If you have accepted your offer of admission to Penn State:

If you completed SRAR and are accepted to Penn State, please provide the following for grade verification:

• Official transcript from years 9, 10, 11, and 12. If the transcript is issued in a language other than English, it must be accompanied by a separate line-by-line English translation.
• Official copy of the Tawjihi, accompanied by a separate line-by-line English translation.

Community, Environment, and Development graduates have the skills and knowledge necessary to choose from a variety of fulfilling career paths in domestic or international development, environment analysis, or sustainability. Your career depends on the experience you make for yourself as a student. Faculty and professional academic advisers in the Community, Environment, and Development program support and serve students in career development and preparation, including career decision-making, tailoring the CED major to fit career goals, internship and job search strategies, interview preparation, and preparing for employment or graduate school.

With a Community, Environment, and Development degree, you may be prepared for a career working on community-level issues, such as economic and community development, sustainability, the environment and natural resources, and international development. Many graduates choose careers in environment/sustainability, corporate social responsibility, economic development, local government, community-based nonprofits, or local foods.

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT POTENTIAL CAREER OPTIONS FOR GRADUATES OF THE COMMUNITY, ENVIRONMENT, AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Opportunities for Graduate Studies

About 40 percent of CED graduates go to law school or pursue graduate studies.

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRADUATE STUDIES