The United Nations identified 17 Global Sustainability Goals for achieving a holistic approach to sustainable development for all. While each of these goals is important, we believe the goal of quality education plays a substantial role. Education lays the foundation of the thinking process, develops a culture, and shapes a student's future vision. Education is a powerful medium that will address the other SDGs, including climate action, clean water and sanitation, industry, innovation, infrastructure, and build a sustainability attitude among the next generation workforce. The outcome of such education will lead to a positive change and recognize the need of all stakeholders to contribute to the sustainability theme at large.

As the goal describes the focus on acquiring knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, MIT School of Sustainable Design Shillong is our attempt to addressing the same. The current changes in the world affect us adversely, and sustainable design education with the framework of liberal studies can be a channel to open consciousness among professionals of tomorrow. India requires to build a belief system towards the focus on sustainability and the importance of a positive impact in the future. India opens newer opportunities to use Design education for addressing the issues that threaten the human race customized to its complex diversity and culture. Within India, Shillong offers rich biodiversity and an environment that can stir intellectual and creative thoughts.

The sustainable design program attempts to build an attitude and an innovative approach for designers with values of empathy, awareness, and accountability. If the sustainability attitude is correlated to the skills pyramid using the experiential learning model, it can lead to a positive impact and required focus towards sustainability by the young. We aspire to collaborate with industry and community members to instill a culture among our students via design, technology, and innovation education with a sustainability culture. Our unique pedagogy model based on principles of learning by doing will nurture a shared culture and collectively work towards the world problems. We aim to achieve this vision by establishing the following goals.

1. Institutionalise sustainability: Work proactively to integrate sustainability into the core activities and responsibilities of all stakeholders

2. Promote a culture of inclusive sustainability: Work on cultural definitions of sustainability, which includes care of the environment and human communities & promote multicultural inclusion across all initiatives

3. Integrate sustainability in teaching: Collaborate with important stakeholders like the industry where students can learn and apply sustainability principles and techniques in their education courses

4. Sustainable campus plan: Create world-class sustainability centered campus to refine, track and implement SDGs and global standards

We will collectively work towards the mindset building to be conscious of sustainability at every walk of life in personal or professional aspects.

At MIT School of Sustainable Design Shillong, our objective is to coach the next generation of innovators with design, technology, and innovation skills to be conscious and focus on sustainability. We are adopting the approach and framework of liberal education, which provides the learner an interdisciplinary exposure. Learners will be able to view things from multiple perspectives with a lens of suitability, thus providing greater value to industry and society. The program will offer a cross and interdisciplinary education exposure leading to developing critical thinking and other necessary skills to innovate for today and tomorrow. Additionally, the program has been designed to develop the learner's foundation, followed by a focus on exploration and further developing the core skills.

Learning in a positive environment like Shillong motivates future innovators to achieve their career goals

This vision backed with the rich natural diversity of northeast India at Shillong will create an engaging learning environment and make the envisioned impact. Shillong is the Education capital of the eastern part of Indian and has some of the leading education campuses and a student-friendly environment. The place has an existing sensitivity towards a sustainable environment, and the government has launched various initiatives to promote the same. Infact, Asia's cleanest village Mawlynnong is located in Shillong.

Sustainable education is a BOLD STEP

We are moving from our comfort zone of nearly four decades to do an innovative greenfield project to develop an ecosystem that will grip one into another, leading to creating a learning network for sustainability. We invite collaboration with the industry, experts, opinion leaders, and educators to collaborate on this effort for instituting the first focused education program on sustainability. While we are investing our passion for building this unique culture and school, we request your suggestion, support, and joint effort to create a conscious future talent that looks beyond academic excellence enduring a future for all.