“Given the scale of the challenge we face, it is essential that everyone has a basic understanding of climate,” the plan says.[H]Higher education must advance the learning agenda through interdisciplinary education provision.”
in 2022 World SurveyIn 2015, 60% of higher education institutions reported that less than 10% of courses included climate-related content. But pioneering universities are changing that. These diverse institutions each have their own approach and mission. They all have adopted a strategy of integrating sustainability content throughout the curriculum as much as possible, breaking down traditional silos and disciplines to make these courses accessible to as many students as possible.
Toddy Steelman Stanback, former dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, Aspen Institute's This Is Planet Ed Higher Ed Task Force. Duke has a wide range of Climate Action In 2022, we will expand our operations, research grants, partnerships, etc. New York Climate Exchange.
But “education is our superpower,” Steelman says. “We want every major to major in climate science. Our responsibility is to educate students so they can navigate these challenges and find solutions. Whether they're a pastor, teacher, nurse, engineer, legislator or whatever, if they have some background in climate and sustainability, they're going to bring that to their first job and their second job.”
Thus, each of the 10 departments within the university is represented by Duke University as “Fluency Framework” The framework encompasses the skills, behaviours and attitudes that underpin an understanding of climate and sustainability.
Allowing schools to find their own ways and forcing a shift to climate-related content by mandate would take time. Steelman, who advocates for all undergraduates to be fluent by 2028, said, “We're going to go through a committee process and see what works.”
The hope is that this process of respecting faculty expertise will lead to greater ownership of climate content and more meaningful integration. Steelman says the schools of nursing and medicine are leading the way, and interestingly, the French department, too.
“They are incorporating the issue of climate change into their French conversations,” she said. “They are also thinking about research on verb conjugation. The way we talk and think about the future has an impact on climate change.”
The School of Environmental Science and Forestry at the State University of New York at Syracuse Ranked #1 nationwide The school (along with two other schools) plans to launch a sustainability curriculum in 2023, so it may come as a surprise that there aren't any courses focused solely on climate change — at least for now.
“At least at the introductory level, we don't necessarily teach climate change specifically,” says Stephen Shaw, chair of the Department of Environmental Resources and Engineering.
“We make sure we teach the fundamentals so people understand the science and what it means to do climate adaptation and mitigation,” he added. Students can even work with professors to directly build instruments to measure greenhouse gases in the field.
Shaw said the department is currently discussing adding an introductory interdisciplinary course that would answer questions like, “What is the basic science? What are the impacts? What are the effects on people? What are the overall effects on habitat, recreation, etc.”
Dickinson College, a 2,000-student liberal arts college in Pennsylvania's coal country, mandated that all students take at least one sustainability course as a graduation requirement in 2019. In practice, said Neil Leary, Vice President and Director of Academic Affairs, Dickinson College Center for Sustainability Education“More than 50 percent of students who graduated this May had taken four or more such courses, and one in four had taken six or more.”
Dickinson offers more than 100 sustainability courses per semester across a variety of departments, from business to architecture. The college's “mosaic” courses, offered once or twice a year, are particularly interesting; these courses are co-taught by professors from different disciplines and often include an independent study and/or travel component. In a recent course on Germany's energy transition, students studied representations of the environment in German literature and culture and traveled to Germany to observe the implementation of solar power and energy efficiency in practice.
Similar to Duke University's fluency framework, Dickinson follows a broad definition of sustainability, Leary says. He cites the World Council on Science and the Environment, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization committed to environmental and scientific advancement. Education and Research on Environment and Sustainabilityidentified five key competencies in this area: systems thinking, futures thinking, collaboration skills, strategic thinking, and values ​​thinking.
“This is not a value-neutral education,” Leary says. “Sustainability has a set of values ​​that includes considering the needs of all people.”
At the moment, universities that are fully committed to sustainability are rare, and it could be a selling point in the race for students, faculty and donors: Leary says that in a recent Dickinson College survey, 40% of undergraduates said sustainability was a major reason they attended the college.
But if leaders in the field have their way, sustainability curricula will go from a nice-to-have to a necessity. Brian Alexander, author of “Universities on Fire” One educational futurist with a particular focus on climate change said, “My slogan is that climate change is the new liberal arts.”