Expanding Student Engagement in Sustainability: Using SDG- and CEL-Focused Inventories to Transform Curriculum at the University of Toronto

Rashad Brugmann,Nicolas Côté,Nathan Postma,Danielle Pal,Emily Shaw,John Robinson

doi:10.3390/su11020530

Abstract

The Expanded Student Engagement Project (ESE) has developed three comprehensive inventories which aim to increase student knowledge of sustainability-related course content and increase student engagement in on- and off-campus, curricular, and non-curricular sustainability projects at the University of Toronto (U of T). The first is a sustainability course inventory (SCI) generated using keyword search based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is the first SCI that has been based on the SDGs. The inventory identified 2022 unique sustainability courses and found that SDG 13 had the greatest representation and SDG 6 had the least. The second inventory is a community-engaged learning (CEL) sustainability inventory which found 154 sustainability-focused CEL courses and identified 86 faculty members who teach sustainability CEL. Finally, an inventory of sustainability co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities revealed that U of T has 67 sustainability-focused student groups and identified 263 sustainability-focused opportunities. These inventories are an important foundation for future initiatives to increase student engagement in sustainability on campus and in the community. The ESE will integrate this data into U of T’s course management system and use the inventories to develop a new sustainability pathways program.

Highlights

The University of Toronto’s President’s Advisory Committee on the Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability (CECCS) has developed a project intended to support undergraduate student engagement with sustainability issues that challenge the university and its neighbouring communities
This paper investigates the process by which the Expanded Student Engagement Project (ESE) created its primary deliverables: three inventories which catalogue (1) undergraduate courses with sustainability content (2) undergraduate courses with sustainability focused community-engaged learning (CEL) opportunities and (3) undergraduate co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities actively promoting sustainability at the U of T
The sustainability course inventory (SCI) found 2022 sustainability courses, which represents 25% of the 8158 undergraduate courses offered at U of T

Summary

Introduction

The University of Toronto’s President’s Advisory Committee on the Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability (CECCS) has developed a project intended to support undergraduate student engagement with sustainability issues that challenge the university and its neighbouring communities. This project, titled the Expanded Student Engagement Project (ESE), is working to expand student knowledge of sustainability-related course content and increase both on- and off-campus student engagement through sustainability focused curricular and non-curricular projects. This paper investigates the process by which the ESE created its primary deliverables: three inventories which catalogue (1) undergraduate courses with sustainability content (2) undergraduate courses with sustainability focused community-engaged learning (CEL) opportunities and (3) undergraduate co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities actively promoting sustainability at the U of T. We demonstrate how the inventories work in service of embedding sustainability pedagogy into curricula across the numerous departments operating at U of T

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion