This fall, Columbia University School of Professional Studies is launching the new M.S. in Project Management (PMGT)—with concentrations in Construction, Technology Management, Sports Management, and Sustainability Management—a degree designed to prepare professionals to lead complex initiatives across industries.
That mission shapes the Sustainability Management concentration, led by Dr. Steven Cohen. For prospective students considering the degree, the central question is clear: how do you manage projects in a world shaped by climate change, resource scarcity, global supply chains, and growing expectations for organizational responsibility?
“A critical part of project management nowadays is sustainability, because today’s projects are expected to deliver not only financial results, but also long-term environmental and social value,” explains PMGT Program Director Dr. Evangelia Ieronymaki.
Within the PMGT program, sustainability is treated not as a separate discipline, but as part of the practical realities of modern project work.
Sustainability as a Management Practice
For Cohen, sustainability is not a separate concern that sits outside project management. It is increasingly part of how organizations are run.
“Sustainability is transforming how organizations are managed,” he says.
Within the context of project management, Cohen defines sustainability broadly. It includes environmental sustainability, such as energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, and resource consumption. It also includes equity in how employees are treated and the impact an organization has on its surrounding community.
Those concerns, he says, belong inside the project manager’s work.
“Those are things that a project manager should be paying attention to as they’re producing their plan and budget for a project,” Cohen explains.
That framing reflects a shift in the field. Project managers are not only responsible for schedules, costs, vendors, and deliverables. Increasingly, they must also understand how projects affect people, communities, and the environment—and how those factors shape long-term organizational value.
What the Concentration Adds
The Sustainability Management concentration allows students in the M.S. in Project Management to build a focused area of expertise while developing broader project leadership skills.
“One of the fastest-growing parts of our economy is the green economy,” Cohen says. Investors, he notes, are asking more questions about environmental and climate risk. Organizations are also facing new pressures around energy use, supply chains, resource constraints, and public accountability.
For project management students, the concentration offers a way to connect core management skills with a substantive field that is becoming more important across industries.
Students in the concentration do not take sustainability courses created only for project management students. Instead, they take courses from Columbia’s broader sustainability management curriculum, learning alongside students pursuing the full M.S. in Sustainability Management.
“These are not sustainability courses designed for project management people,” Cohen says. “These are sustainability courses designed for sustainability people.”
That distinction matters. Students gain access to deeper sustainability expertise while bringing a project management lens to the material. They learn not only why sustainability matters, but how sustainability initiatives are developed, financed, implemented, and managed inside organizations.
What Students Learn
The concentration draws from a range of sustainability management courses that align with project management work.
Students may study sustainable operations, supply chain management, decision models and management, greenhouse gas measurement, life cycle assessment, sustainability finance, and solar project development.
In a sustainable operations course, for example, students learn from a practitioner who has spent two decades leading sustainability work at Colgate-Palmolive. The course examines how sustainability projects are managed inside a large corporation that produces consumer goods at scale.
Supply chain management is another key area. As Cohen notes, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed how vulnerable global supply chains can be when disruptions occur. For sustainability-focused project managers, supply chains also raise questions about sourcing, energy use, transportation, resilience, and environmental impact.
Students also have opportunities to focus on more specific types of sustainability projects. In a solar project development course, they examine how solar farms are built and how solar arrays are deployed in residential settings. The course addresses community concerns, vendor relationships, supply chain issues, costs, financing, tax credits, and other factors involved in bringing a solar project from concept to completion.
“It gives the project management students the ability to get into the weeds on a particular kind of project,” Cohen says.
Turning Ideas Into Projects
A key theme of the concentration is implementation. Sustainability goals can sound broad—reduce emissions, improve energy efficiency, eliminate waste, strengthen supply chains—but organizations need professionals who can turn those goals into managed projects.
Cohen describes project management as the ability “to take an idea and make it real.”
That means assigning responsibilities, identifying vendors, estimating costs, building schedules, and coordinating execution. Sustainability adds another layer because many of these projects involve innovation, measurement, and organizational change.
Cohen points to an example from Amazon, where a team worked to eliminate the small plastic bubbles used in packaging. Over several months, the team tested different materials, assessed environmental impact, evaluated costs, and ensured that products would still be protected. The result was a paper-based package that was less environmentally destructive, less expensive, and effective in protecting products.
“Somebody had to manage that project from the beginning, from conception, until the time that Amazon stopped using the little bubbles,” Cohen says.
That example illustrates the kind of work sustainability project managers may encounter: projects that look operational on the surface but require environmental knowledge, financial analysis, stakeholder coordination, and execution discipline.
The Return on Education
For prospective students, the return on education lies in the combination of project management training and specialized sustainability knowledge.
Cohen emphasizes that Columbia SPS offers professional degrees in fields not always covered in traditional business or public policy schools. Students in the Project Management program can pursue a general management path or focus in areas such as technology, sports, construction, or sustainability.
In the Sustainability Management concentration, students gain access to Columbia’s broader expertise, resources, alumni network, and career support. Cohen points specifically to SPS’s alumni network and Career Design Lab as part of the school’s professional value.
“Our outcome measure in the school is you should have a better job when you leave than the one you had when you arrive,” he says.
For project management students, the concentration strengthens their ability to position themselves in organizations where sustainability is becoming central to strategy, operations, finance, and risk management.
“They will be able to sell themselves both as project management professionals, but also with an area of emphasis on sustainability,” Cohen says.
Learning in New York City
Columbia’s location in New York City also shapes the value of the concentration. Cohen describes New York as part of the largest regional economy in the United States and one of the world’s most diverse global cities.
The city’s economy spans finance, health care, high tech, design, communications, and other sectors. All of these industries need project managers. Increasingly, all of them also need professionals who understand sustainability.
Energy costs, for example, are rising. Organizations are looking at renewable energy, energy efficiency, and environmental risk. For students combining project management with sustainability, New York offers exposure to a broad set of organizations navigating those challenges in real time.
Why Now
The urgency behind sustainability is growing.
“The world is getting warmer,” Cohen says. “We’re seeing resource scarcity. We’re seeing growing levels of pollution.”
He also points to population growth as a defining pressure. When Cohen was growing up, the planet had roughly 4 billion people. Today, it has more than 8 billion.
“The resource strain is real,” he says.
For Cohen, the challenge ahead is not only to reduce harm, but to rethink how the economy uses resources. The current model of extracting materials, using them, and discarding them into landfills is not sustainable over the long-term.
“We have to develop an economy that allows us to reuse resources rather than throw them into landfills when we’re finished using them,” Cohen explains. “That is why sustainability is so important to economic growth going forward.”
As organizations respond to climate risk, resource constraints, energy costs, supply chain pressures, and public expectations, sustainability expertise will increasingly become part of professional management.
“I think you’re going to see more and more professionals of all kinds developing some sustainability expertise,” Cohen says.
For students in the Sustainability Management concentration, the opportunity is to develop that expertise while also learning how to lead projects from idea to execution. In a changing economy, that combination may be what allows sustainability goals to move from aspiration to action.
About the Program
The Columbia University Master of Science in Project Management program equips individuals with the strategic, analytical, and leadership skills essential for a successful career managing complex projects across industries and borders.
Available full-time or part-time, the M.S. in Project Management is designed for professionals who want to advance into leadership roles or formalize their project management experience with a strong academic and practical foundation. Students can opt for the general Project Management program or choose from one of the four specialized concentrations: Construction, Sports Management, Sustainability Management, and Technology Management.
Taught by scholar-practitioners and enhanced by Columbia’s location in New York City, the curriculum integrates emerging digital tools and AI-driven practices to help graduates make data-informed decisions and improve operational efficiency. Graduates will be prepared to lead high-stakes projects with confidence and clarity, and return to the job market with a competitive edge.
The application deadline for the M.S. in Project Management program is June 1. Learn more about the program here.
