Education and Learning

Sustainability needs diverse groups of experts to solve climate change

I teach a course on sustainability challenges. Students work in groups to help community partners with projects relating to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The students come from many different areas of study and collaborate on developing meaningful projects. According to a recent report by Cole et al (2022) working with diverse teams is … Continue reading →

Challenge yourself

The apparent legitimacy of celebration

Sustainable development goals

In my sustainability classes we look at the United Nations sustainable development goals. I think there are positives and negatives with the goals but one of their benefits is that they do introduce a broad perspective on sustainability. With that in mind, I thought that I would connect the different ideas from my posts this … Continue reading →

Smaller goals make for success along the way

Why self-care is scientific and sustainable

When I thought of creating an advent calendar of self-care on my blog I asked myself why. How does it fit within the overall purpose of the site? But that question is the very reason why I decided to do it. Taking care of yourself is often shunted to the side. Particularly during holidays there … Continue reading →

Grading requires an ego that I don’t have, at least in sustainability

Okay, so 2+2=4. If that’s the question, I can probably grade it. But most of what I teach is sustainability and “right” answers are a lot less clear. I’ve been doing research into self-reflection and sustainable assessment recently for a project and I think it applies here. Sustainable assessment, described by Boud and Falchikov (2007), … Continue reading →

Context matters in climate change policy support

I tend to set up the courses I teach in ways that students aren’t always used to. I do this based on research about effective strategies and I talk to my students about that research and the reasons why I have chosen a particular approach. I find these conversations are really important because, like most … Continue reading →

Systems thinking and mapping resource

I’ve been working on a project related to the introductory sustainability course that I teach. Systems thinking is an incredibly valuable approach to assessing complex situations and challenges. However, it can be very challenging to grasp. As I developed the systems thinking material for my course, I created an open educational resource (OER) on the … Continue reading →

Seriously!? An unfounded but standard “race correction”?

I’ve had pulmonary function tests, which test how well your lungs function. I don’t come out particularly well. But apparently, if I was Black my results wouldn’t look so bad. This is because there is a so-called race correction applied to results of these tests for Black patients. The thing is, this correction has no … Continue reading →