Education and Sustainability at Willamette University

Education Working Group

Sustainability Retreat, August 2005


Introduction
The education working group consisted of Frances Chapple (emeritus professor of chemistry), Khela Singer-Adams (Director of Community Outreach), Kendra Mingo (Office of Faculty Research and Resources), Heather Miller (assistant professor of education), Monique Bourque (Director of Student Grants and Awards), and Inga Johnson (assistant professor of mathematics). The group was facilitated by Joe Bowersox (associate professor of politics).

Prior to attending the retreat, members of the working group examined the sustainability programs of nine North American universities and colleges, and also read three articles on the challenges posed for sustainable education. At the retreat, the working group began their deliberations by developing a list of nine challenging benchmarks that seemed obtainable by the year 2025. We then tried to delineate specific challenges to each of those benchmarks (such as funding, institutional inertia, alternative priorities etc.), as well as existing and future opportunities to take deliberate steps towards achieving them. Due to time, our discussion brief elucidates only three of our nine benchmarks.

As a working group, we wished to emphasize Willamette's primary educational mission and the unique opportunities liberal arts institutions enjoy for creating an inclusive atmosphere dedicated to life-long learning. We also wanted to embrace the University motto, "Not unto ourselves alone are we born," and see within that phrase a fundamental understanding of social and environmental sustainability. Similarly, we wished to encourage a more inclusive and engaging understanding of our collective educational endeavor, where students, faculty, staff, and administrators are all both teachers and learners.

Our discussion brief first examines our institutional mission. After noting our nine benchmarks, we then elaborate on collaborative/interdisciplinary teaching, intercultural education and service learning, and student/faculty research opportunities. For each provide a short justification of their importance for a liberal education generally and sustainability more specifically, and then a discussion of obstacles and short range opportunities. We offer this brief as a means to stimulate further discussion regarding the fostering of sustainable education across the university.

Sustainability Education Mission Statement
To promote the teaching and learning of knowledge, skills and values of sustainability to the Willamette community.

"Sustainability is at the center of what we do as an institution, seeking live by its profound motto "Not unto ourselves alone are we born". ---President Pelton, 2005

There are two pieces to an education mission centered on the idea of sustainability. First, education is a means to develop literacy in sustainability and second, education is means to implement and access sustainability and its components that are equity, economics, and environment. What we provide here reflects our examination of successful practices at comparable universities as well as past and present successes at Willamette to help achieve these goals.

Sustainability and Education in the Liberal Arts
The working group believes Willamette University ought to harness the foundational "skills" at the heart of liberal arts education (informed decision making, critical thinking, persuasive argument, interconnectedness of complex systems, global issues, interdisciplinary analysis, and communication skills) to provide educational opportunities around the key principles of sustainability ("the four Es"-equity, environment, economics and education). While this may seem like a daunting task, we believe that not only does Willamette possess the energy and talents to do so, but it is a natural outgrowth of our institutional mission. In the section below, we list both some means by which we can take immediate steps to do this a short justification of such, and our long range, "big ideas." The following section briefly expands upon three of our long range objectives. We offer these as a means of initiating further dialogue within our community.

Short and Long Range Examples
Some immediate and effective ways to facilitate and maintain a campus dialogue on sustainability include the following:

• Expand the Willamette University sustainability website to include a sustainability "encyclopedia" of information and terms.
  
  
• Incorporate sustainability definitions, mission, and principles into existing Willamette faculty and student handbooks.
  
  
• Continue to bring education speakers to campus to address emerging issues in sustainability (Dempsey Environmental Lectures, Partnership with Straub Environment Learning Center Lecture Series, etc)
  
  
• Additional examples include: fact sheets, mail groups, campus resource list, book clubs, town hall meeting, campus commons, annual sustainability summit, professional development conferences, mentoring, formal curriculum, continuing presence of sustainability council.

Positive Outcomes:

• Educating our community about sustainability issues has implications on admissions, giving, retention and recruitment.
  
  
• Education about sustainability has the potential to influence public awareness, public policy, and public education.
  
  
• Education can improve social justice of Willamette community
  
  
• Members of Willamette community will be engaged in dialogue through education methods.
  
  
• Infusion of sustainability into teaching and learning
  
  
• Creating a common theme across curriculum.

Our Big Ideas:

• Every student will experience another culture through abroad/service learning
  
  
• Freshman seminar involving sustainability
  
  
• Continuing sustainability education for faculty, staff, and students (physical and virtual space, intellectual resource
  
  
• Some element of sustainability in every class
  
  
• An ethos of sustainability on campus
  
  
• More collaborative teaching
  
  
• 25% of students give sustainability as reason for attending WU
  
  
• Incorporating mission in the classroom
  
  
• Research informs action/action informs research

Expansion Upon Selected Objectives
1) Fostering collaborative/interdisciplinary teaching in sustainability.

Justification
Contemporary issues of social and environmental sustainability like rural poverty and endangered species protection are characterized by complex relationships between implicit or explicit societal values and multiple objectives: "solving" one problem (e.g. protecting a threatened plant) may create myriad new ones (e.g. eliminate scarce "family wage" jobs), and places values and communities in conflict. In order to thoughtfully and rigorously interrogate such wicked problems, Willamette should foster rigorous, informed collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching in sustainability at the same time that it continues to foster and advance more "traditional," disciplinary exploration of social and environmental sustainability. Collaborative and interdisciplinary efforts purposefully bring to bear the insights of differing disciplinary assumptions, methods and evidence, enhancing the capacity of students and citizens to make informed decisions and choices. Interdisciplinary teaching and collaboration also models a life-long disposition to iterative and problem-oriented learning, as instructors both impart knowledge and in turn learn from others.

Examples
Ideally, collaboration and interdisciplinary explorations of sustainability can be imagined spanning divisions and colleges within the university, as well as involving staff and administrators (say in service learning). The following are just a couple of examples of possible courses:

• Toxicants and Risks (Law and Chemistry faculty)--Examining the unequal distribution of exposure and risk in occupations or communities to toxicants. May also involve members of the facilities staff whose training and experience makes them acutely knowledgeable of the tradeoffs and consequences of risk reduction.
  
  
• Sport, Drugs, and Contemporary Society-(Exercise Science and Sociology Faculty)-Examining use of performance enhancing drugs by secondary school and collegiate athletes.

20 Year Benchmark
By 2025 Willamette should have the capacity for each department or graduate program to offer on average one interdisciplinary collaborative course per year on social and environmental sustainability. Incorporation of other campus experts and use of service learning "community laboratories" is commonplace.

Challenges
Rigorous collaborative teaching and learning is hard, and often the structure of departments and university reward structures inhibit its use. Faculty, administration, and staff should explore ways to address among others the following obstacles posed by the following:

• Impacts upon small departments
  
  
• Lack of disciplinary expertise
  
  
• Perceptions of subordinate value in promotion and tenure
  
  
• Student credit/departmental requirement constraints
  
  
• Support for staff and administrator involvement when appropriate

Present and "Mid-Range Opportunities
Willamette has a long tradition of interdisciplinary and collaborative learning, reflected in previous iterations of general education requirements, cross-college seminars, and unique common ventures like the "Alternative Futures" project of the 1970s. The following are some immediate and longer range strategies to foster collaborative learning:

• Creation of team-taught "modules" within existing courses (guest teaching, etc.)
  
  
• Funding of a general workshop on collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching
  
  
• Creation/reinvigoration of campus teaching resources (e.g., "teaching enhancement committee)
  
  
• Utilize existing campus funds (e.g. Hewlett grants) to foster collaborative teaching
  
  
• Establish a working group (with a web presence) to foster and encourage particular "matches" amongst faculty.
  
  
• (mid-range) develop "community sustainability projects" that will foster collaborative and interdisciplinary teaching over multiple years (e.g., a community garden, stream/community restoration, Methamphetamine working group, sustainable indigenous cultures working group)

2) All students will experience another culture. Every student will experience service learning.

Justification
A part of the liberal arts education is to open awareness and increase knowledge of peoples, cultures, and the natural environment around them. Students who participate in service learning have an increased level of civic engagement during and after college. Service learning provides a method of pedagogy that allows students to connect theory with practice and increase skills such as critical thinking and problem solving. Students that are civically engaged are more likely to vote, to care about ones community, and to make sensitive, caring, and knowledgeable decisions about issues concerning their lifestyle and community.

Examples

• Continue to expand on international opportunities to engage with other cultures (exp: junior year study abroad opportunities) and present projects on an issue of sustainability experienced while abroad (perhaps a conference or workshop) via experiential learning.
  
  
• Continue to expand domestic opportunities to engage with other cultures (exp: Take a Break (service immersion across the USA focused on community, justice, service, and simplicity), Jump Start: Ohana (new student orientation to multiculturalism) and NSOCO
  
  
• (new student orientation to community outreach) focused on social justice issues.
  
  
• Continue providing direct service opportunities that the entire WU community can engage in (Into the Streets volunteer day, Hunger Banquet, Tunnel of Oppression) which raise awareness of local sustainability issues.
  
  
• Fulbright Hayes opportunities for faculty and staff.
  
  
• Bringing Watson scholars back to present on campus.
  
  
• Campus-based community farm·

Opportunities

• Offer credit for service immersion programs.
  
  
• Offer J-term and post-session service and cultural immersion programs
  
  
• Offer staff and faculty incentives for collaborating in advising and leading service based programming.
  
  
• Provide institutional funding for service immersion programs.
  
  
• Offer incentives to students who choose study abroad programs with a sustainability focus (such as a sustainability cord to wear at graduation).

Obstacles

• Funding
  
  
• Most research-based academics do not value experiential learning as credit worthy.
  
  
• Tracking what WU currently does well (communication about what is out there currently) and what needs more support.
  
  
• HR policies that support staff and faculty involvement in service and cultural immersion programs.

3) The university will promote the exploration of sustainability in research projects such that sustainability is incorporated into 25% of research projects

The university can promote sustainability on two fronts: creating new initiatives, and expanding existing programs. Additionally, existing programs can be more effectively publicized to accentuate connections to principles of sustainability.

New initiatives can include:

• Encouraging research projects that address community and university concerns relating to sustainability, for example: water usage and conservation; land development and small farms; policies and inequities in public education; unequal exposure to toxics; the consequences of drug abuse in secondary school sports.
  
  
• Promoting projects that make use of expertise from various disciplines and sectors of the university; this can include participating in planning and in publicizing speakers from across campus and lecture series such as Atkinson and Dempsey.
  
  
• Financially supporting research projects.

Obstacles
Obstacles to new initiatives may come from faculty or administrators who feel committed to particular aspects of the status quo; others are logistical problems rather than philosophical or pedagogical objections. These might include:

• Requirement for external funding to support new research programs
  
  
• Possible effect on teaching loads
  
  
• Possible difficulty of incorporating new courses or initiatives into the faculty evaluation process
  
  
• Complexity of incorporating new courses into existing curriculum
  
  
• Possible resistance from some faculty to emphasis on practical applications of research
  
  
• Possible resistance to perceived infraction of academic freedom
  
  
• Concern from some faculty over qualifications of non-faculty participants in courses

• Students gain experience in the application of theory to real-world problems
  
  
• Collaborative projects will include a variety of participants (faculty and staff, administrators and students, staff and students, etc.)
  
  
• Projects can involve community members in the evaluation/implementation of results
  
  
• Increased campus understanding of political processes that shape the larger community

The university can begin to address these goals by making small changes to existing programs and exploring the feasibility of longer-range projects. Short-term projects might include:

• Creating outreach/recruiting materials for existing service-related or environment-related programs that speak more directly to issues of sustainability (including post-graduate programs such as Fulbright, Watson, Truman)
  
  
• Gathering and disseminating information about existing programs to potential applicants and potential students; programs that can enable sustainability-related projects might include Lilly, Webber and other internal scholarships
  
  
• Using website material on programs and students (front-page profiles, for example) to promote Willamette as a model of sustainability

• Including sustainability as part of selection criteria for existing scholarships such as Webber
  
  
• Expanding existing scholarship programs as possible (Carson)
  
  
• Identify new funding sources for grants (cooperation with Development, etc.)