By Chandler Precht (’22SPS, Sustainability Science), Director and Lecturer, Columbia University School of Professional Studies, Office of Environmental Professional Programs
This year, students in Columbia University’s Master of Science in Sustainability Science (MoSSS) program traveled to Vietnam for the inaugural offering of Sustainability and Resilience of Tropical Highland Ecosystems, a field course designed to immerse students in the study of biodiversity, climate resilience, ecosystem services, and community adaptation.
The course was led by Professor Brendan Buckley, co-director of the MoSSS program and a long-time member of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory’s Tree Ring Lab. Buckley has conducted research in Vietnam since 2006 and has published extensively on the paleoclimate of Southeast Asia since 1995. He was joined by Cindy Ip, assistant director of student affairs for Columbia’s sustainability graduate programs, and Jenna Lawrence, a faculty member in the M.S. in Sustainability Management program.
The class was also supported by guest instructors from the Southern Institute of Ecology (SIE) in Ho Chi Minh City, including Dr. Luu Hong Truong and Dr. Le Buu Thach, both experts in biodiversity, ecology, and the Indigenous peoples of the Vietnamese Highlands. Additional SIE staff members, Ms. Dung, Ms. Hua and Ms. Truc, contributed greatly to the course and to the cultural exchange that shaped students’ experience in the field.
The course was fast-paced and highly intensive, and immersed students in the study of tropical highland ecosystems across a region that includes the Núi Chúa and Lang Biang Biosphere Reserves. These UNESCO-designated reserves are home to Núi Chúa National Park, located near Vietnam’s coast, and Bidoup-Núi Bà National Park, located in the Central Highlands. Together, these landscapes represent some of the highest remaining biodiversity in Southeast Asia and provided an ideal setting for students to examine the relationships among climate, biodiversity, land use, and local communities.
Similar to the MoSSS field course Buckley co-taught last summer in the Cayman Islands with coral reef expert and MoSSS faculty member William Precht (Sustainability and Resilience of Tropical Coastal Ecosystems), this course took students on an ecological and sociological journey. Moving from sea to summit, students explored a transect of ecosystems where plant and animal species are still being discovered and where local communities are adapting long-standing traditions to a rapidly changing world. In fact, this area of high biodiversity and endemism has more than 14 tropical ecosystems that serve as home to numerous endangered species of plants and animals, and with as many as 70 tree species per hectare.
The course began in the lowlands, where pressures from population growth, land-use change, and sea-level rise are contributing to migration into higher-elevation areas. Students first explored Vietnam’s unique southeast coast, where powerful northeast monsoon winds pushed waves against the shoreline. Those same winds also carried and concentrated debris along the coast, leaving large accumulations of mostly plastic waste on otherwise pristine beaches.
Heavy autumn rains, intensified by a moderate La Niña, had also washed trash from upland canals and waterways into Vinh Hy Bay, where the class was based. The result was an eye-opening example of how waste, water, weather, and land-use patterns can intersect across entire landscapes. For many students, this became one of the most striking observations of the course and ultimately shaped one of the final group projects.
The students, staff, and faculty on an ancient coral reef on the southeastern coast of Vietnam.
As the class moved into the highlands, students examined how ecosystem services provided by biodiverse upland systems are increasingly threatened by climate change, land-use shifts, tourism, development, and population pressure.
The course also highlighted the human dimensions of environmental change. As global temperatures rise and sea levels increase, more people are moving away from lowland areas and onto the Lang Biang Plateau. This “upward diaspora” presents complex challenges for Indigenous communities, including the K’ho, Raglay, and Cham peoples, who have lived in the highlands for generations and maintained a delicate balance with the environment. At the same time, tourism and development have brought new economic opportunities, improved livelihoods, and expanded access to education.
Students had the opportunity to interview members of local communities, gaining insight into how climate change, land-use change, conservation, development, and cultural continuity are shaping the future of the region. These conversations became some of the most meaningful experiences of the course, helping students understand sustainability science not as an abstract framework, but as a field grounded in people, place, and lived experience.
For students, the course offered more than exposure to Vietnam’s extraordinary landscapes. It provided a hands-on opportunity to connect field observation, ecological data collection, community engagement, and sustainability science in practice.
In the field, students worked in forest plots developed and monitored by the Southern Institute of Ecology, helping collect census data on key tree species. Using Diameter at Breast Height (DBH) tapes, plot maps, tree tags, field observations, and relative height estimation methods, students measured tree diameter and height, assessed tree health, and compared ecological conditions across Bidoup-Núi Bà National Park and Núi Chúa National Park.
Those field measurements were then brought into the classroom and analyzed using RStudio. Students mapped tree distributions, modeled relationships between diameter and height, calculated biodiversity indices, estimated biomass and carbon stocks, and explored how ecological data can be translated into climate-relevant metrics, including carbon credit values.
According to MoSSS student Sarah Howard, “By combining field observations with data analysis, [students] were able to see how individual trees, species, and ecosystems connect to much larger questions about ecological health and biodiversity, carbon calculation and valuation, and climate impact and resilience.”
The course also reinforced the interdisciplinary foundation of the program’s curriculum. MoSSS student Rachel Condon noted that previous coursework in systems thinking, climate dynamics, biodiversity, and environmental data analysis helped prepare students for the concepts they encountered in Vietnam. The field course gave students a chance to apply those concepts in real time while encountering new questions related to invasive species, agroecology, land-use change, and community resilience.
For Buckley, the course underscored why field-based learning is essential to sustainability education. “The problems we face today, that our students are charged with tackling when they graduate, are decidedly global in scope,” Buckley said. “We need to prepare our graduates to venture out into the world to engage with stakeholders from any number of locations.”
In Vietnam, students saw firsthand how environmental challenges are often shared across borders but experienced locally. In Vinh Hy Bay, waste generated elsewhere accumulated along the shoreline, leaving local communities to manage the consequences. Buckley noted that a similar dynamic emerged during the Cayman Islands field course, where marine debris from other Caribbean nations washed onto local shores: “In both cases, the communities left to deal with the waste are not the communities who produced it, and it poses a demonstrable cost in time, effort, and money, not to mention health.”
Buckley also emphasized that while international field courses are invaluable, similar learning opportunities exist closer to Columbia’s campus. “These issues of waste are not limited to the outside world,” he said. “I would strongly advocate for increasing our international engagement with our field offerings but also offer courses that look at our own backyard, in the Lower Hudson Valley, for example.”
Expanding both international and local field opportunities, he noted, would allow more students to gain applied experience while examining sustainability challenges across different ecological, social, and geographic contexts.
By the end of the course, students had moved from Vietnam’s coastal ecosystems to its tropical highlands, studying biodiversity, climate resilience, waste systems, land-use pressures, Indigenous knowledge, and ecosystem services along the way. The inaugural Vietnam field course offered a powerful example of what makes this program distinctive: the opportunity to learn not only about complex environmental systems, but within them.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia University School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Science program, offered by the Office of Environmental Professional Programs in the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School, prepares students for management and leadership positions in which they help organizations address environmental impacts. Students learn strategies to respond to the ever-changing environment and predict future environmental changes—and the impact on corporations, not-for-profits, and the public.
Designed by Research Faculty at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in collaboration with Columbia’s Earth Institute, the program develops a new generation of scientific leaders through a cutting-edge curriculum led by the world’s top sustainability scientists, the majority of whom are Lamont Research Professors. Graduates are well prepared for management and leadership positions, armed with the scientific expertise to drive meaningful environmental change and lead organizations in a rapidly evolving sustainability landscape. With the flexibility to choose from a variety of courses, students can tailor their education to career goals, while New York City serves as a living laboratory for sustainability innovations and connects them with employers actively seeking program graduates.
Learn more about the program here.
