Master of Science in Sustainable Fashion
Glasgow Caledonian New York College
Key Information
Campus location
New York, USA
Languages
English
Study format
Blended, Distance Learning, On-Campus
Duration
16 - 24 months
Pace
Full time, Part time
Tuition fees
USD 37,904
Application deadline
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Earliest start date
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Scholarships
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Introduction
Unique among college programs focusing on fashion, this degree prepares students for leadership roles, helping them transform the industry and develop creative strategies to support sustainability, social equity, and ethical practices within fashion. Students in the Sustainable Fashion program will learn the benefits of operating a business under a new paradigm, eschewing the former singular goal of profit for shareholders and replacing that with the need to serve a wide range of stakeholders. This program prepares graduates to understand the full range of business needs from supply chain to merchandising, to marketing messaging.
Gallery
Curriculum
Participating in a research-based curriculum, students in the fashion program will write master’s theses designed to address real-world challenges, collaborating with partner companies and organizations.
Thesis partnerships are facilitated by GCNYC’s Center for Social Impact and Innovation, which provides a support network and collaborative research opportunities for students, social entrepreneurs, and leaders in sustainability across industries.
- 8 Courses
- 36 Credits Earned
- MS
- Master of Science degrees focus on an area of specialization vs MBAs which offer a broad overview of business. GCNYC offers a Master’s of Science rather than an MBA so that more of our courses can focus on our specialty: sustainability and fashion.
Values Based Leadership Skills for an Interconnected World
This course will enable students to identify, understand, develop and articulate their key personal abilities in the context of their future career aspirations. The development of their academic and professional skill set is essential to securing and/or developing fulfilling careers as expert managers and leaders in increasingly diverse and international workplace organizations.
Navigating Global Change: Business Practices for the Common Good
This course reflects the fact that organizations do not operate in a vacuum: they are both shaped by and themselves also shape the geo-political, economic, social and technological environments in which they operate. Understanding the interaction between organizations and their wider contexts is essential to effective management and responsible leadership. This course is designed to equip students with the information and analytical skills required to critically reflect upon some of the most significant issues which pose challenges to business managers and organizational leaders in the modern world.
Business Strategy as an Instrument for Economic, Social and Environmental Sustainability
This course aims to provide students with academic knowledge and analytical tools with which to discuss and practice strategic management in a world characterized by rapid change and increasing concerns for economic, social and environmental sustainability. The course seeks to address the who, what, why, where and how of strategic decisions, with an emphasis on generating sustainable growth across national boundaries. Students will develop the knowledge and skills required to undertake the necessary research and analysis to advise a firm on the issues that organizations face, and the choices they must make, to develop strategies for sustainable growth.
Purpose-Driven Marketing and Communications
This course covers the end-to-end process of marketing communications planning – from research to creative briefing – using a lens of ethics, integrity and responsibility. It takes both an analytical and a creative approach to develop a strategy for both traditional and digital marketing initiatives by introducing a framework that helps marketers cover all critical elements for a successful campaign. The strategy is built with the consumer, their needs and their rights, at its core, not the product.
Fashion as Culture / Culture as Fashion
We are all curators, with endless content to consider. As visual language becomes dominant in an online consumer marketplace, how do we understand the provenance, relevance, value, worth, and cultural power of fashion? By interrogating the exchange between consumer desire and corporate fashion marketing, this course proposes further investigation of their inherent duopoly. We will consider fashion as an indicator of social affinities, aspirations, privileges — and also of personal, societal, and environmental costs and benefits. As traditional notions of value shift, we’ll envision how we might redefine “luxury” in the context of both climate change and intersectionality. Brand identity is a conceptual and paradigmatic force; we’ll examine its impact on consumerism and ask the question: What are the politics of aesthetics and how are they changing?
Sustainable Fashion Strategy
Building a new sustainably-focused fashion business, or shifting an existing business not currently managing sustainability considerations, requires a specific set of skills, considering all needs of the business from supply chain to marketing messaging. As the world changes and demands a new paradigm for operating a business – eschewing the former singular goal of profit for shareholders and replacing that with the need to serve a wide range of stakeholders – a new knowledge base, a greater flexibility and an entirely different skill set is required to succeed. Success under such a paradigm is not just doing better than before but actively doing good.
This course covers the range of considerations specific to operating with a common good lens but general to every fashion business, focusing on product creation including designing for reduced impact, material sourcing for sustainability and ethics, supply chain considerations, tools and metrics by which to manage sustainability/ethics/impact in your business, brand voice and impact messaging, circular economy considerations, risk management, positive impact opportunities, best business structures for positive impact, and shifting stakeholder perspectives. Through readings, lectures, class discussion, guest speakers, and development of a sustainability focused business outline students will develop the toolset needed to function at any level of a business – from independent contributor to CEO – to support positive impact.
Research Methods
This course aims to develop advanced skills related to a range of contemporary research methods needed for academic and practical research at a Master’s level. Students should be able to critically evaluate new concepts, ideas and evidence from a range of sources and crucially and transfer their skills into practice. Emphasis is placed on written and oral presentation skills at an advanced management level.
Thesis
The aim of this course is to conduct business research/consultancy and report on the findings. Drawing on the proposal developed in Research Methods, the course focuses on the business research project, which involves an investigation of a substantial business issue or problem. Students are required to demonstrate critical awareness of business practice, relevant theories and research techniques and approaches. The project element of the course in particular offers students the opportunity to apply course concept, theories and techniques, draw on internationally published literature and good practice, and develop and interpret knowledge about management practice in their area of study.
Learning Options
Create a schedule that dovetails with your busy life and additional commitments!
In-Person
- Attend class on campus at 64 Wooster Street
- Live courses are offered in the evenings
Hybrid
- Split attendance between in-person and Zoom
- Frequency is determined at the time of course registration
Remote
- Students participate in campus classes via Zoom
- Students interact with their instructor and other students online
- Remote courses meet virtually for live sessions
Program Outcome
- To develop intellectual acuity in the relevant theories, principles and practices of social business.
- To critically understand impact, sustainability, and equity considerations in a changing world and how to apply them to new and existing business dynamics in the fashion industry.
- To critically examine the trends in contemporary marketing campaigns to effect social, political, and ethical impact and deploy marketing communications for ethical and social impact.
- To demonstrate critical understanding of cultural heritage, cultural appropriation and intersectionality in the fashion space.
- To develop critical thinking and analytical skills to comprehend and select appropriate methodologies and research techniques for independent research.
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
Jobs in this Field:
- Director of Sustainable Strategy
- Manager for Innovation in Sustainable Business Transformation
- Sustainable Operations Manager
- Raw Materials and Sourcing Expert
Our Graduates are Working at:
- Coach
- PVH
- Tiffany & Co.
- Kendra Scott
- Macy’s
- The Real Real
- Bonobos
- And more!
English Language Requirements
Certify your English proficiency with the Duolingo English Test! The DET is a convenient, fast, and affordable online English test accepted by over 4,000 universities (like this one) around the world.
Program Admission Requirements
Demonstrate your commitment and readiness to succeed in business school by taking the GMAT exam – the most widely used exam for admissions that measures your critical thinking and reasoning skills.
Download the GMAT mini quiz to get a flavour of the questions you’ll find in the exam.