Educational Elements
Environmental Policy and Livable Communities: From Academic Inquiry to Student Engagement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jean Wilson
Our study reports on the impact of two innovative inquiry courses offered by McMaster University’s interdisciplinary Arts & Science Program. It is co-authored by the Artsci Program Director and the course instructors: one is co-founder and Executive Director of Environment Hamilton, an environmental advocacy organization, and the other a Professor of Civil Engineering who researches sustainable, resilient communities and green infrastructure. We start with some context on the Artsci Program—its objectives, achievements, and challenges in a changing educational landscape. We then share our experience in the courses, whose mandate is to conduct high-quality, socially relevant, and engaged inquiry in the areas of environmental policy and livable communities. One course focuses on the dynamic between environmental issues, scientific evidence, and public policy. It creates space for students to explore and critically assess the perspectives of players engaged in and affected by environmental policy development and implementation. Exposure to government, private sector, and community practitioners actively involved in a particular policy area helps students understand how theories and concepts translate in reality. The other course focuses on the enhancement of the livability of our communities by considering technological change along with environmental and social sustainability principles. Design aspects and system-based thinking for decision-making give students practical tools for livable community applications. We conclude by linking these courses to the development of sustainability education at McMaster, showing their relation to practices and initiatives in the wider Hamilton community, and discussing exciting student involvement in work invested in meaningful social change.
Engaged Scholarship and Sustainability: The Case of Promoting Social Governance toward a Just Development in Taiwan
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ching-Ping Tang
Recent years have witnessed a trend of engaged scholarship in which scholars extend their laboratories and classrooms to neighbor communities or the society as a whole to pursue the achievements not only in writing but also in doing, in changing the fates of real lives. Instead of integrating into the market, such as the case in the United States where a triple-helix (business, university, and government) dominates technology governance or adding into governmental efforts though cross-national mega projects like the case in Western Europe, the case of Taiwan demonstrates the third approach. Since neither the state nor the market has been robust and active enough to work with the academic community, scholars turned to work with the society to pursue sustainable development goals. In the context of industrialization and democratization, the academia in Taiwan first struggled for autonomy against political influence, and for international competition in ranking in the past half century. In the unfavorable institutional settings, the scholars were more willing to assume social responsibilities by allying with a wide variety of societal forces, such as NGOs, social enterprises, and grassroots associations in recent years. The case demonstrates how the higher education institutions could be the intelligence and innovation centers that generate and disseminate knowledge, help to shape moral standards, or even arbitrate the value conflicts in the rapid-changing world. In addition to describing the preliminary achievements, this study also indicates the challenges and the potential for developing countries.
Teaching Sustainability at the Undergraduate Level through the Lens of Human Flourishing
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sr. Damien Marie Savino
In this era of ecosystemic crisis, it is becoming increasingly important to renew and reform our approaches to environmental education so that they encourage, not only knowledge accrual, but also real changes in attitudes and lifestyles among our young people. This presentation proposes an educational paradigm for undergraduate teaching of sustainability centered on the theme of human flourishing. The author reports on a “test case” which was an undergraduate seminar course taught for juniors and seniors entitled “Sustainability and the Good Life.” In the course, the students entertained questions such as: What do we need to be happy? What are some obstacles to happiness and human flourishing? How does sustainability relate to happiness and the “good life”? How can the practice of sustainability foster human flourishing and the good life? Sustainability was considered in an integrated context incorporating, natural, social, economic, and cultural aspects. Students read from classical literature such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas and brought those readings into dialogue with contemporary readings on sustainability and creation care, by authors such as Henry David Thoreau, Wendell Berry, William McDonough, and Pope Francis in Laudato Si’. The objectives of the course were to encourage communal discussion of ideas related to human flourishing and its connection to sustainability, as well as to encourage application of these ideas to concrete situations and personal ways of living.
Experience Using High-Impact Educational Practices in a Yearlong Course on Sustainability
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tom R Trice, Gregg Fiegel
High-impact educational practices improve student learning, retention, and engagement. These practices include learning communities, undergraduate research, community-based learning, writing intensive courses, and first-year experiences, among others. The Association of American Colleges and Universities notes that effective first-year experiences emphasize critical inquiry, frequent writing, information literacy, and collaborative learning. In this paper, we describe a new and developing yearlong interdisciplinary first-year experience for Honors students that focuses on sustainability and incorporates high impact teaching and learning practices. Students in the course investigate environmental, social, economic, and political facets of sustainability using both a historical and contemporary lens. As individuals and in groups, students research sustainable communities in local and global contexts and explore resilience and systems thinking as strategies for addressing complex problems. Sustainability topics intersect with the paths of all undergraduates, regardless of major. Therefore, focusing on these topics during an interdisciplinary first-year experience provides the opportunity to bring together, engage, and inspire members of a diverse learning community. The course is unique in that it is the only sustainability-focused lower-division general education experience at our institution. In addition, it is the only yearlong interdisciplinary experience available for first-year students. The course is taught by an interdisciplinary team of instructors and learning assistants, and it incorporates a number of high-impact educational practices, including collaborative projects, community-based learning, diversity learning, and e-portfolios. In the paper, we describe the course and the high impact practices we employed. In addition, we summarize and comment on preliminary assessments of student learning.
