Teaching Toward Sustainability

The guide offers strategies for integrating sustainability concepts and competencies within a course. The following guide builds on the work of faculty and staff across Barnard College, including the Office of Sustainability & Climate Action, the Environmental Science Department, the Environmental Humanities Minor and Concentration, the Digital Humanities Center, and instructors who have for decades examined climate science, environmental harm, and sustainability in their teaching.

While this first iteration focuses predominantly on sustainability as an urgent area of interdisciplinary teaching and learning, we also address topics such as environmental justice and ecocriticism. At the core of this guide is a provocation to imagine sustainability as an integral component of class design, a framework that can guide pedagogical approaches as well as specific units. This guide focuses on definitions and approaches to sustainability pedagogy, and the CEP wants to think with the Barnard community about what it would mean to engage in sustainable teaching practices–beyond and in addition to teaching sustainability, climate, and environmental justice as content areas and skill building frameworks.