Sustainability is the idea that humans must interact with the environment in a way that ensures there will be enough resources left for future generations. Sustainability is often described as having three dimensions or pillars: environmental, economic, and social. Sustainability education focuses on educating how to counteract major environmental problems, including climate change, loss of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, land degradation, and air and water pollution.
Sustainability education asks the questions: What is sustainability? What do we want to sustain? What is a good life? How do we create a better world? It is often an integrative discipline and a multidisciplinary project with statistical, scientific, and humanistic dimensions. A still-evolving field, sustainability education has the primary goal of harnessing the power of education to advance environmental literacy and civic engagement that prepares students for jobs that contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future.
Community colleges can serve as pedagogical leaders by infusing content and learning methods across all disciplines that help students develop a knowledge base about the environment, the economy, and society. Colleges can also help their communities learn how to live in a sustainable manner.
The National Green Jobs Advisory Council DEI Rubric seeks to support the intentional development of equitable, diverse, and inclusive (DEI) workforce training materials. The tool is not exhaustive but rather is designed to help guide and focus content development around best practices in DEI. Many of the suggested guidelines adopt a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework and are effective teaching and learning practices.
Targeted universalism means setting universal goals pursued by targeted processes to achieve those goals. Within a targeted universalism framework, universal goals are established for all groups concerned. The strategies developed to achieve those goals are targeted, based upon how different groups are situated within structures, culture, and across geographies to obtain the universal goal.
What is Culturally Responsive Teaching?
Getting Started with Culturally Responsive Teaching
Accelerating Systemic Change in Higher Education is an open-source repository focused on increasing systemic change in higher education by inviting in diversity and inclusivity and integrating sustainability with a focus on STEM disciplines.
Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Resources from the American Association of Colleges & Universities – a resource repository that includes webinars, publications, initiatives, institutes, and more to help increase diversity in higher education, explain why it is important, and demonstrate broader societal impacts by increasing DEI.
Increase the Diversity of your Graduates is a resource from Interdisciplinary Teaching About Earth for a Sustainable Future helps educators increase student diversity and grow their programs. Different pages on the sidebar focus in on why diversity is important, attracting a diverse student body, and supporting students through programs.
U.S. Department of Energy STEM Educational Resources contains open-source webinars, courses, workshops, trainings, and more from the various offices of the U.S Department of Energy related to STEM (Science, Technology, Math, and Engineering).
Interdisciplinary Teaching About Earth for a Sustainable Future (InTeGrate) offers curriculum modules and curricular materials to integrate sustainability education into numerous disciplines including:
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) has produced free curricular resources and supporting materials on environmental science available to educators and students.
As the Sustainability, Education and Economic Development (SEED) Center is a FREE initiative offered by the National Council for Workforce Education, we strive to provide our users with up-to-date information and materials. We encourage you to submit resources or open-source curriculum for possible posting on the SEED Center website.
Note: SEED is managed by a team of higher education experts who vet and curate resources and curriculum. Thus, not all submitted materials will appear on the website.
2023 SEED Center website updates funded by Lumina Foundation
©The SEED Center 2024