Rebecca Boger: Using Food Security in Introduction to Urban Sustainability at CUNY Brooklyn College
Rebecca Boger, Brooklyn College, CUNY
My course is an introduction to urban sustainability that integrates materials from environmental science, sociology and economics. As a relatively new course, I have been learning about what works or doesn't work each time I teach it. From the onset, the course was designed around two-week units pertaining to sustainability topics (e.g., water, transportation, housing). A few years ago, I took a Team Based Learning (TBL) workshop. While the course structure doesn't totally fit within the TBL design, I do apply many of the elements, such as having students work in teams throughout the semester, giving quizzes at the beginning of each unit so that students do the reading and come prepared to learn more deeply about a subject, and more application activities and fewer lectures. One of the course units is food and so the food security module was a perfect fit for the course, both in content and structure.

Crafting a Sustainability Message
Martha Henderson, The Evergreen State College
This activity asks students to develop text for a descriptive information board or kiosk to be placed at Growing Places Farm and Energy Park, a educational facility for at-risk youth.

Environmental Assessment Course
Suzanne Savanick, Science Education Resource Center, Carleton College. Based on a Greening the Campus environmental studies colloquium course taught at Carleton College in 1991.
The classic campus-based project is an environmental or sustainability assessment, often referred to as an environmental audit. This course, taught at Carleton in 2001, describes how this type of project can be ...

Lesson 1: Water Resources and Water Footprints (Middle School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
This lesson helps students understand why Earth is considered the "water planet." Students analyze how much of Earth's water is available for humans to use for life-sustaining purposes, and they ...

Lesson 3: The Value of a Water Footprint (Middle School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
Session 1 of this lesson begins with a quick activity to get students thinking about their direct and virtual water use. It introduces a few new ideas for virtual water use that may surprise students, including the ...

Lesson 3: The Value of a Water Footprint (High School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
Session 1 of this lesson begins with a quick activity to get students thinking about their direct and virtual water use. It introduces a few new ideas for virtual water use that may surprise students, including the ...

Lesson 1: Water Resources and Water Footprints (High School)
Kai Olson-Sawyer, GRACE Communications Foundation
This lesson helps students understand why Earth is considered the "water planet." Students analyze how much of Earth's water is available for humans to use for life-sustaining purposes, and they ...

Measuring the Inclination and Declination of the Earth's magnetic field with a smartphone
Avradip Ghosh, University of Houston-University Park
The poles of the Earth's magnetic field are not precisely aligned with the geographic north and south poles and, in fact, vary continuously. This activity introduces to students the Earth's magnetic ...

Global Change Biology Service-Learning Project
Course taught by Dr. Phil Camill, Biology Department, Carleton College. Example compiled by Suzanne Savanick, Science Education Resource Center.
The class engaged in a service learning project to craft a draft sustainability vision for Carleton. The students worked in teams of 3-4 students and the statements that each of the teams developed were shared with the Environment and Technology Studies Program (ENTS) and the Carleton Environmental Advisory Committee (EAC).

Exploring Primary Productivity
Catherine Hill, Arizona Western College
Interacting with Data: Using interactive on-line graphs and datasets created by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) from data collected from six oceanic arrays using hundreds of instruments, students can ...