READY OR NOT
Global Challenges, College Learning, and America’s Promise
Pre-Meeting Symposium
Wednesday, January 21, 8:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
SUSTAINABILITY: Place, Responsibilities, and the Curriculum
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR SYMPOSIUM REGISTRANTS:
The 2009 Pre-Meeting Symposium, Sustainability: Place, Responsibilities, and the Curriculum, is designed around questions from an important frontier of integrative learning. Sessions will encourage participants to share ideas and practices that help students apply their knowledge, skills, and social and personal commitments to the complex, interconnected problems and opportunities of sustainability. Issues of sustainability and responsibility are global and local; consequently, the symposium will emphasize the role of place in focusing curricular and co-curricular learning. (See full program below.)
To highlight place, participants have been assigned to roundtables based on institutional location. In this way, we hope to plant the seeds for smaller learning communities that might continue to grow and develop after the meeting. Symposium leaders will pose questions for the roundtable groups at each plenary session, so please stay with your assigned table.
The List of Roundtable Assignments (PDF) is in order by region – east to west. Please locate your state, institution, or name for your table assignment.
Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you in Seattle on January 21.
About the Symposium
In the pre-meeting symposium, AAC&U locates sustainability at the intersection of place, social responsibility, and undergraduate learning. Such an approach requires perspectives that cut across disciplines, the curriculum, and student life. Educating for sustainability, in other words, is a case study for liberal education.
A review of the LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes makes this connection clear. Students should prepare for 21st century challenges by gaining:
- Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World— focused by engagement with big questions
- Intellectual and Practical Skills—practiced extensively, across the curriculum, in the context of progressively more challenging problems, projects, and standards of performance
- Personal and Social Responsibility—anchored through active involvement with diverse communities and real-world challenges
- Integrative Learning—demonstrated through the application of knowledge, skills, and responsibilities to new settings and complex problems
Institutions increasingly recognize the need to engage the challenges of sustainability. As they pursue goals of linking student learning, place, and social responsibility, however, they often find the pathways are poorly mapped. Participants of the symposium are invited to join in exploring and mapping this exciting integrative endeavor.
The symposium will provide participants opportunities to the explore sustainability through:
High Impact Educational Practices: First Year Seminars, Learning Communities, Writing Intensive Courses, and Collaborative Projects.
Science as Science is Done: Students experience science “in the making” and tie scholarship to public policy choices.
Advanced Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry: Big questions focus students work across disciplines, with faculty, on problems that require multiple perspectives and investigation for their solution.
Curricular and Co-Curricular integration around sustainability
Keynote Speaker
Stephanie Pfirman
|
|
Stephanie Pfirman
Hirschorn Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Science, Barnard College
Education for Sustainability:
Engaging Understanding, Self-Efficacy, and Responsibility in Faculty and Students
Preparing our diverse students with the means and the will to meet the challenge of sustainability requires stimulating their desire to learn, designing experiences that are meaningful, and promoting entrepreneurship in tackling problems. Much can be done by individual faculty working within current curricular structures: general education requirements, first year seminars, capstone experiences, civic engagement, extra- or co-curricular programming. But it is equally important to address the faculty themselves – engaging their understanding, self-efficacy, and sense of responsibility for educating the next generation. High intensity, place-based community learning activities can be transformational for both faculty and students.
Throughout her career, Stephanie Pfirman has been involved with researching the Arctic environment, undergraduate education, interdisciplinary curriculum development, environmental policy strategies, and public outreach. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board, President-elect of the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors, and a member of Project Kaleidoscope’s Faculty for the 21st Century. Pfirman’s current interests include environmental aspects of sea ice in the Arctic, and the development of women scientists and interdisciplinary scholars.
Schedule of Events
8:30-8:45 a.m.
Welcome
Kevin Hovland, Director of Global Learning and Curricular Change, AAC&U
8:45- 10:15 a.m.
Opening Panel: Sustainability, Integrative Learning, and Liberal Education
AAC&U and others continue to strengthen calls to remap liberal education—designing learning opportunities that allow students to develop and demonstrate their knowledge and skills by working through real-world problems. There are genuine opportunities for colleges and universities to use sustainability to model integrative, interdisciplinary learning throughout their curricula and across their campuses. There are also significant obstacles to sustainability education in existing curricular designs and disciplinary practices. Panelists will explore ways to work through the curricular challenges to best take advantage of the opportunities.
Geoffrey Chase, Dean, Division of Undergraduate Studies, San Diego State University; Jean MacGregor, Senior Scholar and Director, “Curriculum for the Bioregion” Initiative, Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education, The Evergreen State University, and Senior Council Member, Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)
Chase Sustainability PowerPoint
(PDF)
10:30-11:45 a.m.
Panel Presentation: Engaging Place/Engaging Students: Bridging Academic and Student Affairs
To achieve the essential learning outcomes of liberal education as well as the comprehensive campus changes necessary for a sustainable future, academic and students affairs need to collaborate closely. Panelists will discuss models for building strong communities of engaged students and for building bridges between the curriculum and co-curriculum to deepen student learning for a sustainable future.
Ann Groves Lloyd, Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs, College of Letters & Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Member, Sustainability Task Force, ACPA - College Student Educators International; Susan Mendoza-Jones, Director of Integrative Learning, Grand Valley State University; Member, Sustainability Task Force, ACPA - College Student Educators International; Jeanne L. Narum, Director, Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL)
12:00-1:30 p.m.
Luncheon Keynote Address
Education for Sustainability: Engaging Understanding, Self-Efficacy, and Responsibility in Faculty and Students
Pfirman PowerPoint (PDF)
Stephanie Pfirman, Hirschorn Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Science, Barnard College
1:45-2:45 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Taking Responsibility: Promising Practices
Promising Practices: Sustainability in the Curriculum
Building on faculty work conducted through curriculum sustainability projects at Northern Arizona University, Emory, and other college and universities, this session will engage participants in developing models for infusing sustainability across the higher education curriculum. Successful examples of such models will be discussed and specific course re-designs will be examined as participants consider how best to integrate sustainability into student learning on their own campuses.
Geoffrey Chase, Dean, Division of Undergraduate Studies, San Diego State University
The Sustainable Learning Community: The University of New Hampshire’s Journey to the Future
Sustainability is at once a contested idea – a plural concept like democracy and justice that must be owned and made sense of by communities of diverse perspectives and conflicting values and from particular ecological and cultural settings –- and a practical idea that must be worked out on the ground, concretely and in sync with the rhythms of day-to-day life. This session will ask how we in higher education make our work fundamentally about sustainability. How does sustainability relate to higher education’s other core values and mission and to the most pressing problems of our institutions and the broader society they serve? We will discuss UNH’s unique “Sustainable Learning Community” model which focuses on four key systems that underpin the ability of a community or society to define and pursue quality of life: biodiversity and ecosystems, climate and energy, culture, and food. These four systems are integrated as educational initiatives focused on institutional policies and practices across what we refer to as the core functions of a university: curriculum, operations, research and engagement (CORE).
Mark Huddleston, President; and Tom Kelly, Chief Sustainability Officer and Director of the University Office of Sustainability– both of the University of New Hampshire
3:00-4:00 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions: Taking Responsibility: Promising Practices
"Big Ideas" and Faculty Learning Communities:
A Strategy for Integrating Sustainability across the Curriculum
If sustainability perspectives and practices are to become part of college graduates' thinking, they must start appearing "across the curriculum" in ways that are meaningful for students. In the Puget Sound region, the Washington Center for Undergraduate Education’s Curriculum for the Bioregion initiative is engaging disciplinary groups of faculty in sustainability curriculum development for use in introductory or general education classes. These "faculty learning communities" (including faculty from seven disciplines) are designing, sharing, and web-publishing activities that integrate sustainability student learning outcomes with disciplinary "big ideas." The initiative director and two faculty leaders from the University of Puget Sound will engage participants in this "big ideas" curriculum design strategy to demonstrate a model workshop that can be adapted for use on any campus.
Jean MacGregor, Senior Scholar and Director , "Curriculum for the Bioregion" Initiative, Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education, The Evergreen State College, and Senior Council Member, Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE); Daniel Sherman, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies and Politics and Government, and Nila Wiese, Faculty, Associate Professor, School of Business and Leadership – both of the University of Puget Sound
Sustainability: Liberal Learning Across Institutional Types This session discusses innovative and cross-institutional curriculum development in alternative energy education occurring at the University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM), which plans to be energy-self sufficient and carbon neutral by 2010 using local resources and on-site generation facilities. UMM is using the topics of energy and sustainability to foster inquiry and innovation, to encourage students to "engage the big questions" of our time, and to facilitate the connection of knowledge with choices and actions. The need to address energy demands and climate change is a global challenge that requires immediate thinking from across the disciplines, new approaches to program and curriculum connections between four year, community college, and K-12 institutions, and the engagement of the public and the business community.
Troy J. Goodnough, Campus Sustainability Coordinator, and Jacqueline Johnson, Chancellor – both of the University of Minnesota, Morris
4:15-5:00 p.m.
Closing Session: Next Steps: Sustainability and Educational Reform
Jeanne L. Narum, Director, Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL)
Co-Sponsors of the Symposium
AAC&U’s thanks the following co-sponsors of the Symposium:
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education
Project Kaleidoscope
ACPA College Student Educators International
The Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education
|
