Education for a Sustainable Future – DANS Resources for your Association

Dear Colleagues for a Sustainable Future,

HomeThe Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability (DANS) is pleased to share an updated collection of  resources and initiatives with you and your associations’ members.

The national trend within higher education continues to grow. The majority of colleges and universities are trying to educate for a sustainable future.  Educators are working to help our students both understand our urgent sustainability challenges, and build the knowledge and skills to participate in solutions.  Each academic discipline has a unique and important role to play.

Many new and updated initiatives and resources are available to help faculty.

We would like to request your assistance in disseminating the announcements below via your newsletters, listservs, websites, publications, and conferences.

1) Creating a Sustainable Energy Future

The need/opportunity to use less polluting energy sources and change our energy wasteful behaviors can be connected to each discipline’s core concepts in both introductory and advanced courses.  The following resources are available to help educators  include energy-related topics  in class in a variety of disciplines:

  • Course Energy Conversations – learning Civil Discourse & Civic Engagement for a sustainable energy future.
  • Power Dialogue – a civic engagement learning activity about our key energy policies, invites faculty and student participation.

2) Call to Action for Academic Librarians and Faculty

Facilitate the discovery, dissemination and preservation of student sustainability projects and research: showcase student work in the library’s Institutional Repository!  This Call to Action is a joint effort of:

Academic librarians and faculty are in a unique and vital position to create a better future, as illustrated by the  ACRL 2015 conference on the theme “Creating Sustainable Community.”  Librarians can contribute to solving urgent societal sustainability challenges by taking the time to:

  • Encourage faculty to invite students with high quality sustainability projects and research to submit their final work to the Institutional Repository (IR).
  • Use keywords such as “student sustainability research” and discipline-specific subject terms to make this work discoverable in the IR.
  • Work to create a section on the IR specifically for sustainability projects and research (making it easier to track for STARS, too)
  • Add a “SUBMIT” button in the library’s IR so students may submit their own sustainability work for later review by library staff (saving the library time and empowering students to play an active role).
  • Work with your library to add OpenDOAR, an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories, to one of the library’s resource pages to increase discovery of other repositories. Try reviewing OpenDOAR to see how other repositories preserve student work.
  • Reach out to nearby colleges and universities if your institution does not have an IR and inquire about collaborating to meet this Call to Action.

Please send any questions or ideas to advance this Call to Action to: US Partnership Fellow and SustainRT Coordinator Elect, Madeleine Charney at mcharney@library.umass.edu or 413-577-0784.  Your input will be appreciated and valued!

3) Sustainability Improves Student Learning 

Updated online resources for faculty!  This website was designed through a US Department of Education grant for academic associations and disciplinary societies to:  (1) increase students’ learning in undergraduate courses; and (2) better prepare students for the 21st-century “Big Questions” that relate to real-world challenges such as energy use and resources, air and water quality, and climate change.

The portal directs you to:

4) Seeking Fellows Applicants for Latino Sustainability Initiative – please share!

The Higher Education Association Sustainability Consortium (HEASC) seeks applicants for two national Fellow positions to work on a new initiative entitled “Latino Leadership for a Sustainable Future.” This initiative is being launched in collaboration with HEASC member, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU).  After a series of meetings exploring the topic, it is clear that the Hispanic/Latino cultures will continue to grow in influence in the United States and in the potential to help build a more sustainable future. The initiative is intended to explore the connections between traditional cultures and sustainability values and to build the capacity for more Hispanics/Latinos to participate and take leadership roles in creating a sustainable future.

The Fellows positions require a commitment of approximately three hours per week and will:

  • Develop a narrative connecting the values of Latino cultures and sustainability,
  • Compile a list of resources for use on campuses (some resources are already gathered),
  • Help write articles and digital messages to disseminate this information throughout higher education,
  • Work in collaboration with Dr. Debra Rowe, director of the HEASC fellows program.

For more information on the fellows program and how to apply:

https://heasc.aashe.org/content/heasc-sustainability-fellows-program

5) Earth Educators’ Rendezvous 2015

July 13-17, 2015 | University of Colorado, Boulder

The 2015 first annual Earth Educators’ Rendezvous will bring together researchers and practitioners working in all aspects of undergraduate Earth education. We welcome faculty from all disciplines who are interested in improving their teaching about the Earth, administrators from geoscience departments and interdisciplinary programs that want to become stronger, and education researchers of all types. Join the Rendezvous for 2 or 3 days or stay the whole week. Design your own professional development opportunity. Capitalize on the experience of your colleagues in a wide range of fields at a variety of workshops, present and discuss your own findings, and network with others engaged in improving undergraduate Earth education. Events will include workshops, oral and poster sessions, plenary talks, and working groups. The meeting will bring together activities that support faculty in improving their courses, departments or programs; in increasing their overall impact of Earth education; and in building a collective capacity to use and conduct education research.

6) Research in Sustainability Webinar Series

Are you a researcher working on developing new technologies, strategies and approaches to address sustainability challenges? Are you a faculty interested in applied learning and community engagement in sustainability – not just learning taking place in the classroom or laboratory but engagement at various levels on campus and in the community? Are you a sustainability champion looking for strategies to find faculty allies to build coalitions to support institution-wide research in sustainability? Are you an academic officer or staff of teaching and learning centers interested in key innovations happening in curricular and co-curricular activities?

All are invited to attend AASHE’s “Research in Sustainability” webinar series to explore the current models of research in sustainability, the future of engaged sustainability education, and how to institutionalize research in sustainability. We encourage you to be part of the conversation by providing your input and asking questions during the webinars or in advance via email at webinars@aashe.org.

For more information and to register please visit: https://www.aashe.org/events/webinars/2015/Research-in-Sustainability

Webinar #1 (May 20, 2015, 3:00-4:30PM ET) From Classroom to Community and Planet: The Future of Engaged Learning and Research in Sustainability
Webinar #2 (June 10, 2015, 3:00-4:30PM ET) Institutionalizing Research in Sustainability in the Context of Competing University Priorities

7) Integrated Network for Social Sustainability (INSS)
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the INSS works to encourage a greater appreciation for social aspects of sustainability. with a particular focus on engineering and its allied professions.  INSS sees sustainability as an integrated concept, rather than as separate environmental, economic, and social sustainabilities, in that each of these elements is inseparable from the others. Social elements remain underappreciated, and INSS works for greater inclusion of these in planning and practice. The aim of the INSS site is to help us create and sustain a network of individuals from various jobs and professions to help us consider the most ill-defined member of the sustainability trilogy: social sustainability.

 

Debra Rowe, Ph.D.
President
U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development
www.uspartnership.org
Co-founder and Program Director
Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium
www.aashe.org/heasc
Founder and Facilitator
Disciplinary Associations Network for Sustainability
www.aashe.org/dans
Sustainability Improves Student Learning Project
https://serc.carleton.edu/sisl
Convener
Detroit Area Green Sector Skills Alliance
Detroit Green Skills Alliance and Detroit Green Map
Senior Advisor
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education
www.aashe.org
Chair, Technical Advisory Committee
Sustainability Education and Economic Development Resource Center
www.theseedcenter.org
American Association of Community Colleges
Faculty, Sustainable Energies and Social Sciences
Oakland Community College
www.oaklandcc.edu/est