Sustainability: Designing Interdisciplinary Opportunities for Teaching
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Sustainability: Designing Interdisciplinary Opportunities for Teaching Lori De La Cruz SMU Graduate Student Sustainability & Development – Lyle School of Engineering Mountain View College Sustainability Coordinator This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. Cover Photo Credit: Jacob Ammentorp Lund/iStock/Thinkstock About this Workbook The Sustainability: Designing Interdisciplinary Opportunities for Teaching workbook is not just about sustainability, in and of itself. It is just a part of a larger sustainability process that: 1) illustrates how sustainability correlates with current courses; 2) provides interdisciplinary opportunities for teaching; 3) equips students with a basic understanding of sustainability in the world and the workforce; and 4) improves students’ critical thinking skills. Sustainability has been a part of higher education for many years in the form of energy and water efficiencies, waste minimization and recycling initiatives. More recently, the inclusion of green building programs such as LEED have broadened the scope of campus sustainability efforts. This workbook was written and designed to serve as a link between col- lege courses and a broad range of sustainability issues. The Sustainability: Designing Interdisciplinary Opportunities for Teaching workbook is the capstone project for Lori De La Cruz, toward the award of an MA in Sustainability and Development from Southern Methodist Uni- versity in Dallas, Texas. Referenced Web Articles Throughout the workbook, links are provided to more information and current events relating to the topic being discussed. Where possible, PDFs of those articles were captured and are available online in folders for each separate subject matter; i.e., geology, business management, etc. The zipped file can be found athttps://drive.google.com/open?id=0B2qb - gdemxbtneTQyUm1GZnFRVTA. Table of Contents I. Overview Sustainability in Higher Education 7 Illustrate how sustainability correlates with current courses 8 Provide interdisciplinary opportunities for teaching 9 Equip students with a basic understanding of sustainability 9 in the world and the workforce Improve students’ critical thinking skills 10 II. Introduction to Sustainability 1. Three-legged stool 12 2. UN Sustainable Development Goals 15 3. How do these tools work within the workbook? 16 III. Geology 19 IV. Business Management 45 V. Computer Science 75 VI. Engineering 83 VII. Government 91 VIII. Endnotes 154 Photo Credit: Purestock/Thinkstock Overview Sustainability in Higher Education Although several papers have been written about the importance of in- corporating sustainability into college curriculum, barriers still exist. For instance, Robert Van Wynsberghe and Janet Lynn Moore note in their pa- per UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD): Enabling Sustainability in Higher Education, “…one barrier to creating sustainability programming that supports this social movement at the uni- versity level is the disciplinary structure of the institution. Many students and faculty work within a specific discipline of study and see little need to engage outside their own discipline.”1 In another paper, Janet Moore’s survey of barriers to sustainability educa- tion says, “A longstanding argument against interdisciplinary undergrad- uate programs is that it would be ‘better’ for students to get disciplinary training first. Many faculty members suggested that it is important for stu- dents to start with a disciplinary foundation and wait until later on in their schooling to deconstruct that foundation.”2 Wouldn’t it be advantageous for students in a community college setting to have been exposed to cross-discipline theories and discussions prior to transferring to a four-year institution as juniors who lack this background? More importantly, those students who complete only their associate’s de- gree will not have the opportunity to learn how sustainability crosses over several disciplines through systems thinking. But, what is systems thinking? According to Donella H. Meadows, “A sys- tem is a set of things – people, cells, molecules, or whatever – intercon- nected in such a way that they produce their own pattern of behavior over time. The system may be buffeted, constricted, triggered, or driven by outside forces. But the system’s response to these forces is characteristic of itself, and that response is seldom simple in the real world.”3 In other words, a system is a set of things that may not seem related at first glance, but as students are encouraged to widen their view to take in more information, the broadening scope will increase the number of inter- relations and impacts available for students to think more critically about a situation. How can it be implemented in higher education? She continues, “systems thinking is a critical tool in addressing the many environmental, political, social, and economic challenges we face around the world. Systems, big or small, can behave in similar ways and understanding those ways is per- haps our best hope for making lasting change on many levels.”4 John A. Cassell and Thomas Nelson makes the case for systems thinking in the classroom when speaking to the problem of students’ understanding of civic engagement: 7 Overview They call upon educators to create a new type of citizenry by helping students to see patterns and connections, raise ques- tions, and act on knowledge for the benefit of the world around them. Ultimately, teachers must help students develop as citizen stewards, able to grasp and promote concepts of healthy eco- logical and social systems. As Orr puts it, educators must teach students the ways in which they are part of the natural world and help them gain an understanding of self and a mastery of their personhood so as to use knowledge well in the world, for the benefit of the world.5 We also need to teach more broadly and cooperatively: This will include emotional and social intelligence which…allow us to connect, feel empathy, and see situations from the per- spectives of others. It will also involve the active use of ecologi- cal intelligence that serves to support the extension of this sense of connectedness to all life on Earth so as to develop the ability to see complex patterns in interconnectedness, cycles and lim- itations of which humanity is a vital part.6 There are hundreds of online resources designed to assist faculty with in- serting sustainability into specific disciplines such as engineering, biology, geosciences, business, sociology, STEM, etc. There are also publications that provide an overview of how to implement sustainability initiatives such as developing environmental management systems, designing cam- pus greening projects, landscaping a sustainable campus and planning for climate action. This workbook serves as a tool for bridging disciplinary silos. Illustrate how sustainability correlates with current courses Integrating sustainability into higher education courses consists of show- ing connections, especially where students don’t initially see them. For instance, some topics in basic Computer Science courses are also rele- vant in: business management, geology, environmental science, ethics, government, sociology, biology, economics, marketing, criminal justice, chemistry and engineering. Of course, almost all topics are applicable to papers written in both English and debate courses. 8 Overview Provide interdisciplinary opportunities for teaching Due to the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability, it is the ideal opportu- nity for the formation of learning communities. The key goals for learning communities are to encourage integration of learning across courses and to involve students with “big questions” that matter beyond the classroom. Students take two or more linked courses as a group and work closely with one another and with their professors. Many learning communities explore a common topic and/or common readings through the lenses of different disciplines. Some deliberately link “liberal arts” and “professional courses…7 Sustainability is a good fit for writing-intensive courses due to its numerous impacts throughout environmental, economic and social issues. It is also a great exercise in developing research skills such as finding and citing credible sources. [Writing-intensive] courses emphasize writing at all levels of in- struction and across the curriculum, including final-year projects. Students are encouraged to produce and revise various forms of writing for different audiences in different disciplines. The ef- fectiveness of this repeated practice “across the curriculum” has led to parallel efforts in such areas as quantitative reasoning, oral communication, information literacy, and, on some campuses, ethical inquiry.8 Equip students with a basic understanding of sustainability in the world and the workforce Remember, students are entering the workforce once they have earned their degrees and community colleges are at the forefront of the charge to prepare them. Increasingly, reports show that companies are implement- ing sustainable practices into their everyday business, so it stands to rea- son that students who have a basic knowledge of sustainable practices would have an advantage. For instance, McKinsey & Company reports that: …much larger