Online Master of Environmental Sustainability

Master the skills to lead social, economic, and environmental sustainability

The Online Master of Environmental Sustainability (MES) is a self-paced, 36 credit-hour degree program that can be completed in as little as two years, and will give you the tools you need to gain a competitive edge in the business of sustainability in the public, private, or nonprofit sector.

Designed to meet the needs of busy working professionals, our fully online and asynchronous program gives you the time to refine your skills, allowing you to lead change and implement policies at the intersection of humans and the environment.

Guided by the same world-renowned faculty and leading researchers as our in-person program, you’ll experience a cutting-edge core curriculum that emphasizes social, economic, and environmental sustainability, along with concentrations in environmental policy and planning or municipal and industrial sustainability.

Enjoy the flexibility to learn on your own schedule while enhancing your skills and mastering the quantitative, economic, and management expertise required to meet the exploding demand for “green” jobs across the nation.

Looking to accelerate your degree? Consider our one-year, in-person program. 

Take the first step

Benefits designed to meet the needs of working professionals

  • Spend limited time away: To accommodate working professionals, courses are conducted online in asynchronous sessions. We offer a flexible program so you can complete your degree at your own pace, and from wherever you are in the world.  
  • Immediate application toward your career: You’ll be able to apply your newly acquired skills and knowledge to business challenges immediately, allowing you to make an impression and advance in your current role with your employer.  

Application deadline

Fall term:

  • Final deadline: July 15

A degree that's in demand

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2023 report, sustainability specialists are the #2 fastest growing job.

Quality meets value

We are committed to investing in the environmental leaders of tomorrow and ensure our top-ranked education is accessible to anyone with the talent and passion to pursue it. That’s why we have priced our Online MES to be the most affordable and competitive degree of its kind: All of our students are charged the same one flat rate for tuition —$690 per credit hour—regardless of residency status.

Learn more about funding options

Breadth, depth, and impact

Hear from Environmental Master’s Programs Director Vicky Meretsky, to find the right O’Neill environmental degree for your career.

Description of the video:

The O'Neill environmental programs take advantage of the full range of environmental science and policy faculty in the number one ranked environmental policy and management school in the nation. All of those students can take advantage of the full range of classes in one aspect of their degree program or another. At O'Neill, we're aware of the fact that students come to us with lives, they come to us with passions, and they come to us with budgets. And those are the things that tend to set the degrees apart. For students who need to be out of here quickly or who need to be out of here with as little debt as possible, the Masters of Environmental Sustainability gives students maximum flexibility to interact with policy, management, and science in a one-year time frame and to walk out of here with as much breadth as O'Neill has to offer in your area of interest. MES students tend to go out into things that require them to be able to hit the ground running quickly, knowledgeable about the social science sides of things and things like how grants work, how agencies interact with their stakeholders. If your interests lie primarily in the sciences, the MSES degree will prepare you for a career working in the lab or in the field or working with the public in the sciences, but still savvy enough to understand how policy and law are affecting the science that you're dealing with and the public that's facing it with you. The science degree is going to give students the ability to handle the science and the quantitative aspects of jobs from more purely science perspective than the other two degrees. In terms of overall level of preparation, the MPA-MSES is absolutely our gold standard. You give us two and a half years and we give you two separate credentials that give you breadth and depth on both the policy and the science side. The dual-degree, because of the amount of time that students spend in it, allows students to hit a slightly higher level of job when they go out and arrive, for example, into middle management, but they have the chops to handle that. The O'Neill environmental master's programs are thoroughly committed to preparing students to work in the real world. There is laboratory experience and field experience available in all of the concentrations to ensure that students are not just book learned. Climate change affects the entire world and that means it affects all of the sectors for which we prepare students. Students need to be able to take advantage of the job opportunities out there but also frankly to help solve the problems of the world. Students can work in areas of climate change solutions at the science level as well as at the policy level in municipalities and in agencies and nonprofits around the world. The O'Neill School is unique among programs of its kind in the nation, in that the policy and the science are under a single roof. The faculty work together, they work with students together and the synergy that results from that provides the basis for our number one ranking.

Or email us at oneillgd@iu.edu for more information on how to apply.