Getting to the Point: Teaching STEM
Content Through Societal Challenges
Debra Rowe, U.S. Partnership for Education for
Sustainable Development
Kelly Mack & Catherine Fry, Association of
American Colleges and Universities
AASHE Conference & Expo 2012
October 16, 2012
Sustainability Improves Student
Learning (SISL) in STEM
Organizing Partners:
Project
Kaleidoscope
Funded by:
About the organizers…
Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL)
• Founded in 1989; now part of the Association of
American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U)
• Leading advocate for building and sustaining strong
undergraduate programs in the fields of science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
• Network of nearly 7,000 faculty members and
administrators at more than 1,000 colleges,
universities, and organizations
• Far-reaching influence in shaping undergraduate
STEM learning environments that attract and retain
undergraduate students
www.aacu.org/pkal
About the organizers…
Disciplinary Associations Network for
Sustainability (DANS)
• Sponsored by the U.S. Partnership for
Education for Sustainable Development
• Seeks to help higher education exert strong
leadership in making education, research,
and practice for a sustainable society a
reality
• Network of over thirty academic
disciplinary professional associations
dans.aashe.org
About the organizers…
Mobilizing STEM Education for a
Sustainable Future
• Launched in 2008 with funding from the
National Science Foundation
• By more strongly connecting the content
and pedagogy of undergraduate STEM
courses to real-world challenges (i.e.,
energy, water, and food), the project aims
to both improve student learning and to
prepare citizens who are motivated to
address these challenges
About the initiative…
• SISL in STEM leverages the influence
of 11 STEM disciplinary societies to
contextualize teaching and learning in
terms of sustainability challenges
• These societies are working together to
use sustainability to underpin their
programs, policies, strategic planning,
and member activities
Who is part of SISL?
• Disciplines represented:
– Physical sciences
– Life sciences
– Social sciences
– Quantitative sciences/mathematics
– Applied sciences/engineering
– Other
– Outreach to more
Project Teams
1) Developing and seeking endorsement of
common language about the importance of and
commitment to education for a sustainable future
2) Gathering and disseminating resources to
support the infusion of sustainability into
teaching and learning
3) Implementing interdisciplinary, problem-based
professional development workshops based on
real-world societal challenges
Project Teams, cont’d
4) Developing public policy recommendations to
include sustainability themes in STEM education and
establishing pathways for civic engagement for
society members and their students
5) Conducting audience research to refine the messages
of the initiative and to guide communication about
sustainability with educators and others
6) Developing content for textbooks and online
resources to infuse sustainability into introductory
STEM courses and improve publisher/author
inclusion of learning activities about sustainability
challenges and problem solving
SISL objectives
• Increase visibility of sustainability as an important
concept for undergraduate STEM faculty to infuse
into introductory STEM courses.
• Improve access to and promote the uptake of
resources that increase student learning related to the
Big Questions that our students will deal with as
citizens, voters, teachers, and/or STEM professionals.
• Promote the uptake of instructional strategies
involving real-world issues by members of
participating societies, including the adoption and
adaptation of new or refined curricular materials and
teaching approaches that focus on real world issues
and Big Questions as they relate to sustainability.
SISL objectives, cont’d
• Collaborate across participating societies on the
activities that they advance, promote, and encourage;
and, in the process, learn from each other about what
works and what doesn’t.
• Connect and sustain the efforts of participating
societies in pursuing common efforts and leading the
way for others to join these efforts.
Ultimately, the goal of our initiative is to increase student
learning in undergraduate STEM courses in order to better
prepare them for playing a role in solving the 21st century
“Big Questions" that relate to real-world issues such as
energy, air and water quality, and climate change.
Educating for a Sustainable Future
“Education for a Sustainable Future enables people to develop
the knowledge, values and skills to participate in decisions
…, that will improve the quality of life now without
damaging the planet for the future… ”
-- UNESCO 2002
“The challenge of living on
this emerging planet is
the challenge of our time,
exempting no one, no
organization, no nation,
and no generation.”
David Orr,
page xvi
What is NOT
sustainable …?
• A world with a large number of
desperately poor
• The ongoing militarization of the planet
• The perpetual enlargement of the human
footprint in nature
• Graduating students without the
change agent skills to create solutions to
our shared sustainability challenges
Ecosystem
Sustainable Communities
Ecosystem
Public Choices and
Behaviors-Laws
Applied
Knowledge/
Technological
Skills
Private Choices and
Behaviors-Habits
Sustainable Economies
Ecosystem
Ecosystem
“Genuine sustainability, in other
words, will come not from
superficial changes but from a
deeper process akin to humankind
growing into a fuller stature.”
page 67
The opportunity
Each academic discipline has a unique and
important contribution to make to solutions
to our shared sustainability challenges.
This initiative focuses on providing students
multiple learning opportunities for realworld problem solving to understand our
sustainability challenges and develop the
skills and knowledge to engage in personal
and systemic solutions.
“For sustainability will be best
understood within the larger framework
of values, meaning, and purpose. Such a
new approach to liberal arts, science,
and sustainability will demand much of
its students; it will demand even more
of faculty members. But it will have one
distinct potential benefit: If it is taught
as an exercise in exploration and
discovery, it may form the basis for a
new kind of global map — a policy
blueprint — that would allow us to set a
common course for all the people of our
rare, beautiful, and benevolent planet.”
-- Frank T. Rhodes, President Emeritus,
Cornell University, Source:
“Sustainability: The Ultimate Liberal Art”
2006
Ways to integrate sustainability
• Learning activities (e.g., Positive futuring)
• Theme throughout the course (e.g., how can we use
what we’re learning to make the world a better place)
• Class projects
• Assessments
• College-wide readings (e.g. Plan B: Mobilizing to Save
Civilization by Lester Brown)
• Minors
• S in the schedule
• Across curricular initiatives
• Interdisciplinary offerings
A Useful Exercise
In the next five minutes:
• Faculty – Think of a big idea you already have to
teach in your course and a big sustainability idea.
Create a learning activity that includes both.
• Everyone else - Take your job activities and/or your
daily activities and think about how you can make
them more sustainability oriented in terms of your
behaviors, the normal practices or the policies in the
institution. Describe the actions you can choose to
help build a culture of sustainability.
• When finished, share among the group.
Thanks to Jean MacGregor at Curricula for the Bioregion for this idea.
Creating Systemic Change
Where are you getting stuck?
Using the cards provided, please write
down the barriers you have encountered
in terms of integrating sustainability into
the curriculum or elsewhere.
When finished, please pass them
forward (you can remain anonymous).
Resources & opportunities
available from SISL
• Statement on Educating for a Sustainable Future, as
endorsed on AAPT’s website:
www.aapt.org/Resources/policy/Education-for-a-Sustainable-Future.cfm
• Curricular resources from DANS:
dans.aashe.org/content/resources
• Call for reviewers of sustainability content in
textbooks: www.aashe.org/announcements/textbooks
• On the SISL web site, you can also find:
• A printable brochure to share with others
• Articles from our partner disciplinary societies on
the importance of and their commitment to
education for a sustainable future
• More resources are currently in development, so
please check back!: www.aacu.org/pkal/sisl