Abstract
Faculty Development for Environmental Sustainability in Higher Education Geoffrey Chase Northern Arizona University . . . universities bear profound responsibilities to increase the awareness, knowledge, technologies, and tools to create an environmentally sustainable future. --The Talloires Declaration Many scholars and activists in recent years have called for substantive reform of higher education aimed at transforming colleges and universities into institutions that model, seek, and teach the values of environmental sustainability. While many of these calls for reform address directly the ways in which colleges and universities use resources, handle waste, and keep their own campuses green (Eagan and Orr, 1992), others suggest that we also need to rethink curricula and help students attain the skills, knowledge, and values that will move us closer to creating a more sustainable society (Orr, Collett and Karakashian, Workshop). If we are to make the kinds of curricular changes that will help us achieve these important and ambitious goals, faculty members in all disciplines across our campuses will have to change the way they conduct research, teach their courses, and design larger curriculum projects. One key, then, to this transformative project is addressing and effecting faculty attitudes through faculty development. At Northern Arizona University, as part of a broad-based initiative aimed at addressing environmental issues, we have engaged in reform efforts through a faculty development program called the Ponderosa Project. Our aim is to help faculty from across campus revise their courses to include issues of environmental sustainability. Our goals in this program have been (1) to help faculty understand how the concept of environmental sustainability is related to their discipline, (2) to help them consider how these concepts may impact their teaching in positive ways, and (3) to help them integrate these ideas into their courses. In this article, we will describe this faculty development program at Northern Arizona University thus far, offer some comments on the results of what we have done, and suggest some of the directions we plan to pursue in the future. We don’t offer this model as the
Highlights
Introduction toArchaeology (ANT 250) - Dr George Gumerman: In this course, students focus on the Black Mesa Archaeological Project in northeastern Arizona as a way of beginning to understand the goals, aims, methods, and theories that shape archaeological research
Northern Arizona University (NAU) is a mid-sized, state-supported institution located in Flagstaff, Arizona
In 1993, the consortium shifted its direction towards the greening of the curriculum outside the sciences and began a series of training workshops that were provided by Second Nature to, "make environmental and developmental issues an integral part of all the disciplines . . . and to practice environmental stewardship on campus and in the surrounding communities." It was significant that NAU was selected as one of eight members of the consortium to participate in this venture as the activities were first practiced in public at NAU during the consortiums annual curriculum development meetings
Summary
Geoffrey Chase Northern Arizona University ". . . universities bear profound responsibilities to increase the awareness, knowledge, technologies, and tools to create an environmentally sustainable future.". Many scholars and activists in recent years have called for substantive reform of higher education aimed at transforming colleges and universities into institutions that model, seek, and teach the values of environmental sustainability. While many of these calls for reform address directly the ways in which colleges and universities use resources, handle waste, and keep their own campuses "green" (Eagan and Orr, 1992), others suggest that we need to rethink curricula and help students attain the skills, knowledge, and values that will move us closer to creating a more sustainable society (Orr, Collett and Karakashian, Workshop). We don’t offer this model as the only way to achieve reform in this area, but as one example of how we might proceed
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