Sustainability Essays

These essays were submitted by faculty in preparation for the Systems, Society, Sustainability and the Geosciences workshop in July 2012. Participants were asked to share their approaches to teaching sustainability in an interdisciplinary context and ideas for exploring opportunities for enhancing the integration of geoscience and sustainability.



The Relevance of Place and Sense of Place to Sustainability
Steven Semken, Arizona State University at the Tempe Campus
Steven Semken , School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University In response to sprawl and globalization that challenge integrity of ecosystems and diversity of cultures (i.e., environmental ...

Sustainability and Understanding Time
Mary Savina, Carleton College
Mary Savina, Geology, Carleton College When I'm talking with students in geology courses about sustainability, I don't use the word much. As one of my colleagues, Aaron Swoboda, puts it, we know ...

Geoscience is by its nature interdisciplinary
David Kobilka, Central Lakes College-Brainerd
David Kobilka, Earth Science, Central Lakes College-Brainerd Geoscience classes, especially those with an environmental component, are by nature interdisciplinary. For example, introductory Oceanography involves ...

The Sustainability Challenge in the Classroom
Tim Lutz, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Tim Lutz, Geology & Astronomy, West Chester University of Pennsylvania "...to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies..." George Perkins Marsh, Man and ...

Sustainability Education within an Earth Science Course at a Small Liberal Arts Institution
Becca Edwards, Southwestern University
Becca Paulsen Edwards, Department of Physics, Southwestern University One of the benefits of teaching at a liberal arts college is the diverse makeup of the students in each class. Teaching these students, who are ...

Service Learning in Interdisciplinary Courses
Maureen Padden, McMaster University
Maureen Padden, School of Geography Earth Sciences, McMaster University I began to teach sustainability when I started my present position at McMaster University. Because I was moving from a different province, ...

Sustainability and Hanford Reach
Tracy Lai, Seattle Community College-Central Campus
Tracy Lai, Humanities/Social Sciences, Seattle Central Community College The struggle over Hanford Reach, the last wild stretch of the Columbia River, is difficult to understand unless we take an interdisciplinary ...

Demonstrating why sustainability is complex
Cailin Huyck Orr, Carleton College
Cailin Huyck Orr, School of the Environment, Washington State University - Pullman Promoting sustainability is complicated and I am not convinced that we always understand how to do it well. This makes teaching ...

Teaching Sustainability Through History
Derek Larson, Saint Johns University
Derek Larson, Environmental Studies, The College of St. Benedict/St. John's University Our environmental studies department was created 20 years ago with the specific intention of interdisciplinarity in its ...

One economist's approach to interdisciplinary teaching and exploration of sustainability
Morris Coats, Nicholls State University
Morris Coats, Management, Marketing and Business Administration, Nicholls State University "The Theory of Economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a ...

Teaching Approaches for Sustainability Education
Bruno Borsari, Winona State University
Bruno Borsari, Biology, Winona State University My proposed model of instruction for sustainability education is focusing on learning about the natural resource base, which provides food, fiber, renewable energy ...

Value of Co-Teaching, Project-Based Learning, and Common Communication for Teaching Sustainability to an Interdisciplinary Class
Steven Burian, University of Utah
Steve Burian, Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Utah Teaching sustainability to students from different disciplines requires new approaches to course planning, lesson planning, pedagogy, student ...

Feeding the World - Teaching Sustainability in a Plant Biology Course
Susan Singer, Carleton College
Susan Singer, Biology, Carleton College Plant Biology at Carleton is designed to introduce students to the basic concepts of plant anatomy, morphology, evolution, biochemistry, physiology, and development in the ...

Sustainability: Teaching for a Moving Target
Julie Maxson, Metropolitan State University
Julie Maxson, Natural Sciences, Metropolitan State University "You ever wonder what global warming is going to look like? In its early stages, exactly like this."Bill McKibben on the recent Colorado ...

Sustainability, Collaboration and Complexity Science
John Motloch, Ball State University
John Motloch, Landscape Architecture & Land Design Institute, Ball State University We are living in an exciting, unprecedented time, when the world within the mind (of an individual or culture) and the world ...

Teaching sustainability through project based learning
James Stone, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
James Stone, Civil and Environmental Engineering, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology My approach to teaching sustainability revolves around an interdisciplinary sustainable design senior/graduate level ...

Sustainability in an Oceanography Course
Katryn Wiese, City College of San Francisco
Katryn Wiese, Earth Sciences, City College of San Francisco Currently the primary classes in which I teach about Sustainability are Oceanography, Environmental Geology, and Physical Geology. Oceanography is my ...

Historicizing Water and Development
Abigail Schade, Davidson College
Abigail Schade, History and Environmental Studies, Davidson College As a historian, I hear historical reasoning — whether implicit or explicit — in many discussions about sustainability and development. Human ...

Making Sustainability Real
Dan Vaughn, Vincennes University
Daniel Vaughn, Earth Science, Vincennes University I have found in teaching this course (an advanced introductory course open to majors and the non-majors alike), in addition to other classes at VU and other ...

The imperative for chemists to teach about sustainability
Scott Cummings, Kenyon College
Scott Cummings, Chemistry, Kenyon College Chemistry plays a central role in many of the global and local aspects of sustainability: with problems of continued dependence on fossil fuels, and with the promise of ...