The annual AASHE Conference, scheduled for Milwaukee October 12-15 has been cancelled and, as a result, we have also cancelled the co-located pre-conference “Curriculum Colloquium.” Instead, AASHE is taking the event online with the Global Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education and SCC is partnering with AASHE on the conference’s “curriculum” track. Please see details and register HERE. SCC will also be hosting a Faculty Meet-Up during the Global Conference, details to follow.
Thursday, January 21, 2021
12:00 Noon Eastern/9:00 AM Pacific
Mitchell Thomashow
In To Know the World, Mitchell Thomashow proposes that we revitalize, revisit, and reinvigorate how we think about our residency on Earth. First, we must understand that the major challenges of our time—migration, race, inequity, climate justice, and democracy—connect to the biosphere. Traditional environmental education has accomplished much, but it has not been able to stem the inexorable decline of global ecosystems. Thomashow, the former president of a college dedicated to sustainability, describes instead environmental learning, a term signifying that our relationship to the biosphere must be front and center in all aspects of our daily lives. In this illuminating book, he provides rationales, narratives, and approaches for doing just that. Mixing memoir, theory, mindfulness, pedagogy, and compelling storytelling, Thomashow discusses how to navigate the Anthropocene’s rapid pace of change without further separating psyche from biosphere; why we should understand migration both ecologically and culturally; how to achieve constructive connectivity in both social and ecological networks; and why we should take a cosmopolitan bioregionalism perspective that unites local and global. Throughout, Thomashow invites readers to participate as educational explorers, encouraging them to better understand how and why environmental learning is crucial to human flourishing.
Mitchell Thomashow devotes his life and work to promoting ecological awareness, environmental learning, improvisational thinking, social networking, and organizational excellence. Currently his passions are teaching, writing, and advising, cultivating opportunities and exchanges that transform how people engage with environmental learning, sustainability, and the arts. Mitchell’s books have significantly influenced environmental studies education: The Nine Elements of a Sustainable Campus, Bringing the Biosphere Home,and Ecological Identity. He was formerly the President of Unity College and the Chair of Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England. He lives in the hill country, the Monadnock Region of Southwest New Hampshire. He loves to explore the fields, forests, wetlands, hills, and lakes of Northern New England.
To pre-register, go to:
Thursdays, October 8, 15, 22, 29
7PM – 9PM Eastern; 4PM – 6PM Pacific
The Sustainability Curriculum Consortium is pleased to announce
in collaboration with The Foresight Lab
a 4-week online course and practicum for faculty on an especially timely topic:
Designed and Delivered by The Foresight Lab Regenerative Design Program
This program is a hybrid synchronous and asynchronous short course and co-creative group collaboration for faculty and directors in Sustainability in Higher Education
Background:
The work of The Foresight Lab in forging peace & reconciliation outcomes, and guiding the transformation of municipal police departments through the craft of diplomacy is deep and broad. Their work in this domain directly contributes to their Vision of The Regenerative Economy: An engine driving consistent and inspiring, and measurable, gains in social, economic, and ecological well-being. This pioneering effort has led to successful social justice interventions in Ferguson, MO, Charleston, SC, Philadelphia, PA, Atlanta, GA, and Baltimore, MD, among many other communities.
Program description, goals & outcomes:
Through this course, we will
1) Demonstrate how the tools of statecraft, or international diplomacy can transform policing, social justice dislocations, and breakdowns in community equity;
2) Deliver clear pedagogical guidance into how to teach across the social intervention platforms of diplomacy, systemics, and complexity science; and
3) convey to delegates the skills of advanced convening and conflict resolution as classroom tools and skills for next generation leaders.
Session themes:
-Introduction to Regenerative Development: Systemics & Social Change as Tools to Redress Broken Policing Models & Deliver Just Outcomes
-History of Reconciliation: Diplomacy on the Global Stage Catalyzing Peace & Unity
-Leadership & Character: The Spirit of Ubuntu, Honor, & Dignity as Foundations for Equity & Justice
-Power, Love, and Honor Within and Amongst Nations: Transmuting Battlefield Peace-Keeping into Communities and Nation States
Pedagogies presented:
-Teaching Techniques as Models of Diplomacy
-Emergent Learning: Pedagogical Design for Transformation
-Potent Inquiry: Teaching & Refining Radically Disruptive Critical Thinking Skills
-Fieldwork : A New Generation of Real-World Learning
-Skill-building and gain-sharing – Shared Destiny in the Classroom & Lived Transformation in Communities
Program participation fee includes access to synchronous live sessions on GoToMeeting and access to readings, discussions and co-created materials between live sessions on the Collaborase platform.
Synchronous Dates: Thursdays, October 8, 15, 22, 29, 7PM – 9PM Eastern; 4PM – 6PM Pacific.
To request further details and registration information:
Wednesday, August 19, 2020
Noon Eastern/9AM Pacific
Madhavi Venkatesan, PhD
Northeastern University and
Sustainable Practices, Ltd.
Introductory economics courses provide an opportunity to connect the economic assumptions of human behavior with their realization and legitimacy in social norms. Given that social norms dictate economic outcomes, the questioning of the behavioral assumptions in economics, specifically insatiable appetites to consume and profit maximization/cost minimization, would appear appropriate. Such a discussion allows for the evaluation of the alignment of social norms with sustainability values: environmental and social justice and economic equity, presenting an opportunity to address how the teaching and the related practice of economics promotes unsustainable outcomes. This approach underscores the significance of an interdisciplinary approach to sustainability education.
In this webinar, SDG 8, Economic Growth and Decent Work and SDG 12, Responsible Consumption and Production will be addressed from the perspective of prevailing economic assumptions. The discussion will address how to engage students in a critical assessment of current practices specific to SDG 8 and SDG 12 and fundamentally, provide them with a classroom forum to understand how and why the practice of economics needs to be modified in order to promote sustainability as a social norm. The discussion will address the following topics: decoupling, carbon taxation, exploitation, competitive advantage, opportunity cost, valuing the environment, externalities, lifecycle assessment, cradle to cradle/cradle to waste, economic growth, alternative economic indicators of progress and stakeholder engagement. The webinar will be of value to anyone seeking to increase economic literacy and will provide an understanding as well as tools to promote understanding of the relationship between an economic framework and the sustainability of its outcomes. No prior economics knowledge is required and the discussion will be interdisciplinary.
Madhavi Venkatesan is an academic economist and environmental activist. She joined the faculty of the Department of Economics at Northeastern University in 2017 as an Assistant Teaching Professor. Previously, while a faculty member at Bridgewater State University, she published three economics text books under the series A Framework for Sustainable Practices: Economic Principles: A Primer, Foundations of Microeconomics and Foundations for Macroeconomics. In 2018, Madhavi traveled to the Philippines as the Fulbright-SyCip Distinguished Lecturer, where her lectures focused on the Economics of Climate Change. In 2019 she published her fourth text, SDG8 – Sustainable Economic Growth and Decent Work for All, and her forthcoming text, Economics of Sustainability is scheduled to be published by Springer in late 2020. She is under contract with Routledge to write a text of SDG 12. In 2016, Madhavi established Sustainable Practices, a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission “to facilitate a culture of sustainability as defined by reducing the human-made impact to the planet and its ecosystems” within Barnstable County, Massachusetts and is the organization’s executive director. She earned a PhD, MA, and BA in economics from Vanderbilt University, an ALM in sustainability and environmental management from Harvard University, and a MA in environmental law and policy from Vermont Law School. Madhavi has contributed to the literature on the relationship between culture, sustainability and economics. Her academic interests include the relationship between economic systems and cultural convergence and the integration of sustainability into the economics curriculum.
Video available at:
