J Environ Stud Sci DOI 10.1007/s13412-015-0315-z
Institutionalizing interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum at a large, research-intensive university: challenges and opportunities Mercedes Ward 1,6 & Brenda Bowen 2,3 & Steven Burian Daniel McCool 5,7
3,4
&
Adrienne Cachelin 5,6 &
# AESS 2015
Abstract As universities and colleges seek to integrate sustainability into a broad range of programs, degrees, and certificates, they must overcome traditional academic silos, disciplinary boundaries, and funding constraints. This requires an unprecedented level of curricular innovation, creative funding streams, and directed facilitation of cross-campus collaboration and communication. This article describes and analyzes recent efforts at the University of Utah to dramatically enhance interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum by utilizing a broad set of tools, including the creation of new faculty and staff positions, faculty learning communities, and special seminars; the development of new degrees and certificates; and the innovative changes in University structure and administration. The authors focus on the role of program coherence, administration, and ongoing support and assessment, as well as network building and systemic innovation that incentivize interdisciplinary sustainability teaching and curriculum development.
* Mercedes Ward
[email protected]
1
Keywords Higher education . Interdisciplinary education . Network building . Sustainability curriculum development . Sustainability education
Introduction There is widespread recognition of the importance of interdisciplinary education for sustainability (Klahr 2012; Lander 2015; McKeown et al. 2002; Warburton 2003), and there is a corresponding interest in how best to design and implement sustainability curricula in an integrated way across diverse disciplines in higher education (e.g., Gosselin et al. 2013; Rusinko 2010). Between 2008 and 2012, the number of interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability degree programs among 4-year colleges and universities in the USA increased by 57 %, and the number of schools hosting such programs increased by 29 % (Vincent et al. 2012). Many of these educational programs are not administratively housed in
2
Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, 115 South 1460 East, Room 383, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Brenda Bowen
[email protected]
3
Global Change and Sustainability Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Steven Burian
[email protected]
4
Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Utah, 110 Central Campus, Suite 2000, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Adrienne Cachelin
[email protected]
5
Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program, 260 S. Central Campus Drive, Room 252, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Daniel McCool
[email protected]
6
Sustainability Office, University of Utah, 1635 Campus Center Drive, Suite 50, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
Anthropology, University of Utah, 270 S. 1400 E., Room 102, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
7
Political Science, University of Utah, 260 S. Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA
J Environ Stud Sci
traditional discipline-based departments or colleges, but rather in interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability institutes and centers (Vincent et al. 2012; Vincent et al. 2014). Such an administrative structure can facilitate true interdisciplinarity and promote sustainable solutions that address social, economic, and environmental dimensions in an integrated manner. Yet, they must be carefully crafted and nurtured to prevent becoming too diffuse and, if neglected, orphan programs. This paper focuses specifically on ongoing efforts to integrate and develop novel and effective interdisciplinary educational initiatives for sustainability at the University of Utah at both the undergraduate and graduate level. We highlight strategies for integrating sustainability across widely diverse disciplines, and we analyze why some of these strategies have fared well and others not-so-well. Although our narrative is specific to the University of Utah, some challenges (e.g., the difficulty of building bridges across disciplines) and lessons (e.g., the importance of identifying an appropriate administrative home for interdisciplinary programs) transcend the particulars of our case. Our strategies and lessons learned for overcoming interdisciplinary and institutional barriers will be especially relevant for other large, research-intensive universities trying to connect sustainability curricula across colleges as diverse as the humanities, sciences, social sciences, engineering, health, medicine, architecture and planning, business, law, and education.
Creating a university-wide sustainability infrastructure Many colleges and universities across the USA and the world are integrating sustainability into their curricula through new and revised courses and programs, and there is a growing body of literature documenting these efforts. Although much of this literature focuses on relatively small colleges and universities, bridging epistemological and institutional divides—as is necessary for interdisciplinary sustainability programs—can be especially challenging at large, research-intensive universities with sprawling campuses and often physically as well as intellectually isolated disciplines. Creating compelling reasons for faculty to leave their silos and interact more broadly is inherently more difficult—and generally less incentivized—than at small, liberal arts colleges. Moreover, the bridging process itself—whether Bbottom-up,^ Btop-down,^ or Bmiddleout^ (see Brinkhurst et al. 2011)—may affect the likelihood of success. As the following brief history of sustainability initiatives at the University of Utah illustrates, the process of integrating sustainability into the campus culture, including the curriculum, has involved a complex suite of change agents and strategies.
A brief history of sustainability at the University of Utah The University of Utah’s Strategic Vision (established in 2012) states that the University maintains seven core commitments, including Bthe pursuit and practice of sustainability^ through the promotion and coordination of Binterdisciplinary and crosscampus sustainability research, learning, and programs.^ This commitment is the result of decades of student, staff, and faculty led efforts to create a university-wide sustainability infrastructure linking campus operations, research, and curriculum. The thrust to advance sustainability at the University of Utah happened on many fronts simultaneously. The sustainability Resource Center (originally named the Office of Sustainability) was created in 2007–2008 as a result of a student-led initiative and focused on integrating sustainability throughout all operations, research, and curriculum at the University. While much of the Sustainability Resource Center’s initial work focused on facilities, many co-curricular initiatives took shape including campus gardens, a small-grants program to fund student and faculty sustainability projects on campus, and some very successful student blogs and social media. In 2008, the University President signed the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, signaling the administration’s commitment to sustainability. In 2009, the Global Change and Sustainability Center (GCSC; called the Global Change and Ecosystem Center until it was renamed in 2012) was created by ∼20 faculty from 4 colleges with a shared interest in interdisciplinary environmental research and student training. In 2011, the undergraduate Environmental Studies Program (created in 1990) became the Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program and developed a set of core classes including a broadbased introduction featuring scholars and practitioners from both the campus and the community. Other core courses include Environmental Science, Environmental Justice, Global Challenges to Sustainability, and a capstone. A major effort to incorporate sustainability more broadly into the curriculum began in 2011 when the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs (the equivalent of a provost) created a new position called BSustainability Curriculum Development Director^ and split the job of directing this new initiative between two faculty—one from Civil and Environmental Engineering and one from Political Science/ Environmental and Sustainability Studies; this immediately provided the initiative with a multi-disciplinary and multicollege perspective. The Senior Vice President laid down two rules to the new co-directors: (1) all programs that are created must be broadly interdisciplinary and cannot be housed in just one college and (2) there must be broad faculty support. Although one might expect that pairing two faculty from different colleges (in this case, Engineering and Social and Behavioral Sciences) would facilitate fulfillment of this directive, such an outcome is not guaranteed. Fortunately, in our case, the specific individuals selected for this leader- ship
J Environ Stud Sci
role proved to have compatible personalities and complementary skills and expertise. Additionally, they received sufficient funds from the Senior Vice President not only to visit other universities to learn more about their interdisciplinary sustainability programs but also to hire a graduate research assistant to help prepare curriculum proposals. Coordination among this initiative, the Sustainability Resource Center, and the GCSC improved with the creation, in 2013, of a new position of Chief Sustainability Officer to oversee and support all sustainability initiatives—including academic and campus operations—via a new overarching unit, the Sustainability Office (at this time the former Office of Sustainability was renamed the Sustainability Resource Center). In 2014, the Honors Scholars in Sustainability and Urban Ecology wrote a compelling letter to the University President and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs calling for sustainability to become a general education requirement. These students noted that the University has both the Bresponsibility, and the opportunity, to provide an education that prepares its students for a world facing serious challenges to its sustainability^—and they conveyed their passion: Bwe can no longer passively watch as this commitment remains optional within the curriculum.^ Unfortunately, the institutional roadblocks to implementing a sustainability general education requirement may be too great to overcome at the University of Utah—at least without continued activism from a very broad base of supporters. This history suggests that sustainability efforts at the university have included top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out efforts (see Brinkhurst et al. 2011). Such a diverse set of approaches to effect change may be especially important in the context of a large, highly decentralized university, like the University of Utah, with 17 colleges and schools that must deal with funding structures that can hinder cross-college collaboration. Indeed, our experience has been that in order to build strong interdisciplinary programs, creative approaches were—and continue to be—necessary to connect previously unconnected units and demonstrate the educational benefits of doing so.
Enabling program coherence: bridging widely diverse disciplines After exploring models at different universities and potential niches for new sustainability programs at the University of Utah, the Sustainability Curriculum Development codirectors collaborated with faculty across campus to develop two new interdisciplinary sustainability certificates at the undergraduate and graduate level. The decision to develop certificates reflected the importance placed on creating programs that would draw together different disciplines in a cooperative way since certificate programs complement rather than compete with degree programs (although in the case of the
undergraduate certificate, undergraduate majors in Environmental and Sustainability Studies are ineligible). Administrative innovations One of the greatest challenges we faced in creating new sustainability certificates was where to Bhouse^ them, i.e., what existing unit of the University would administer them and have the staff, budget, and mission that is appropriate for the certificates. There are two broad approaches to incorporating sustainability into university life. One approach is to create a new college or school of sustainability, transfer existing programs into the new unit, and create new departments and programs specifically designed for the goals of the new unit. Two notable examples are the University of Washington’s College of the Environment and Colorado State University’s School of Global Environmental Sustainability. This approach has the advantage of being a bold and innovative statement that commits a University in a very public way to sustainability. It can also be disruptive and lead to significant turf battles. A second approach is to create a new center or institute that offers incentives to existing programs to participate in sustainability goals and cooperate with the new unit in establishing new teaching and research venues. An example of this approach would be the Earth Institute at Columbia University. The advantage to this approach is that it creates a reward structure that incentivizes existing programs to partner with the new unit in a mutually supportive manner. However, such an approach requires sufficient funding from the University so that the new unit can offer attractive incentives. To date, the University of Utah has tended towards the second approach, drawing on—and reinforcing—the integrative power of non-discipline-based units, namely, the Office of Undergraduate Studies, the Graduate School, the Sustainability Resource Center, and the GCSC. Although the Sustainability Resource Center and the GCSC coordinate sustainability research and educational synergies between departments and colleges, their status as Centers precludes them from granting degrees; they can, however, help administer them. Moreover, their unique position at the interface of research and education facilitates project-based learning and the transformation of the campus into a Bliving lab.^ However, faculty and administrative concerns about the allocation of internal resources can pose a barrier to creating and maintaining successful interdisciplinary centers and institutes. It is important to demonstrate that interdisciplinary sustainability programs enhance the University as a whole, do not deplete disciplinary resources or compete for faculty time and energy, and are open to students and faculty from all departments and colleges. As an example of a concrete step taken to emphasize the latter, a new course designator (SUST for Bsustainability^) was created for the core courses of the graduate certificate (course details in the next section). This explicitly acknowledged that the core courses are not tied to a single
J Environ Stud Sci
department. Student credit hours generated through the SUST core courses are returned to the various departments of the course instructors. Curricular innovations For the undergraduate sustainability certificate, students are required to take a core introductory course (Imagined Landscapes, Visions of Sustainability) that brings together students from different disciplines for a shared experience. Students then pursue 12 elective credits of their choosing (at least 6 elective credits must be outside the student’s home college) and must take a 1-credit final project preparation course in the semester before their final project requirement (3 credits). The graduate certificate program creates a cohort experience by requiring students to take three core courses, including Global Changes and Society (3 credits); Global Change and Sustainability Seminar (1 credit); and a Bgateway course^ to a specific track in leadership, water, or global change. Graduate students must also take 9 elective credits, distributed across courses that address environmental, social, and economic or policy dimensions of sustainability. Of these electives, only one course may be within the student’s home department and only two may be within the student’s home college. The decision to create one graduate certificate with several tracks (students may also design their own track in consultation with program advisors) was made after careful consideration. Sustainability certificates are often focused within disciplinary frameworks (e.g., business) or on certain dimensions (e.g., social justice) or themes (e.g., climate). However, these approaches risk creating Bsilos of sustainability^ wherein students learn about and pursue sustainability goals without the benefits of a wider network to push their intellectual boundaries and creative potential in new and exciting ways. The socalled creative friction that emerges organically from interdisciplinary dialogue and collaboration can be an important stimulus for sustainability problem-solving—and certainly multidisciplinary teamwork characterizes many sustainability projects outside of academia. The core courses create a safe space for this kind of dialogue and contribute to a shared cohort experience. For the graduate certificate, this culminates with BGlobal Changes and Society,^ a project-based course taught by the Directors of the GCSC, faculty who are invested and actively involved in interdisciplinary research and training initiatives. To date, this has included a Distinguished Professor of Biology who is the founding Director of the GCSC and the lead PI on several multi-disciplinary research projects and an Associate Professor of Geology and Geophysics who has worked on several projects at the fringes of geoscience and other fields (e.g., microbiology, energy policy, social science, etc.). The scope and structure of the course was developed by
the GCSC Executive Committee, an interdisciplinary group of faculty with representation from each of the disciplines engaged with the Center. The course invites faculty with relevant expertise from across campus as well as professionals in local government agencies and advocate groups as guest speakers (Walsh et al. 2015). Students from a wide range of disciplines—including geology and geophysics, atmospheric science, mathematics, biology, civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, geography, sociology, communications, parks recreation and tourism, and city and metropolitan planning—have taken the course. Through the course they learn to speak a common language—each bringing their own expertise to bear as they explore the connection between earth systems and human systems—in order to find real-world solutions to Bwicked problems.^ Specifically, the students select a sustainability theme with local to global implications and explore disciplinary paradigms, biases, and perspectives. The students develop an interdisciplinary project, addressing conflicting disciplinary norms—including differences in priorities, methodologies, scope, and expected outcomes—and the overarching challenge of finding a jargon-free common language. Students also explore the uncomfortable territory between science and value judgments, which prepares them for the complex task of communicating the significance of their research to policy makers and the public (Walsh et al. 2015). Ongoing challenges Indeed, the substantive challenge to creating a broadly interdisciplinary curriculum is straightforward: disciplines differ in the questions they ask and the tools they use to answer them. Disciplinary differences in approaches to analyzing and interpreting the world create epistemological barriers that can be difficult to overcome—yet sustainability problems cross-cut so many dimensions of socio-ecological systems that strictly discipline-based approaches can be inadequate (Miller et al. 2008; Redman 2013). Consequently, putting together a curriculum that integrates different disciplines in a coherent manner, although challenging, is an important step towards preparing students for tackling complex sustainability problems in the real-world. This task is not made any easier by the fact that different disciplines often conceptualize sustainability differently. For example, business students commonly consider sustainability to mean the ability to make a profit indefinitely, whereas engineers will commonly engage with sustainability in terms of efficient system design. In addition, student attitudes towards sustainability change as they progress through their programs. For example, findings from a study of civil and mechanical engineering programs suggest students became less interested in sustainability concepts as they progress from freshman to senior standing (Blevins and Burian 2012). Clearly, both economic and ecological concerns
J Environ Stud Sci
are critical, yet a true understanding of sustainability calls on us to move beyond creating technicians to considering how students will respond as community members and citizens to the complex challenges we all face. In addition to the cognitive barriers created by disciplinarity (see Strober 2010)—and the institutional structures that reinforce them—there are practical difficulties to integrating sustainability in the curriculum. For example, the GCSC was initially established on a funding model based on returned overhead from GCSC mission-related grants successfully obtained by affiliate faculty. Confusion and inconsistency about how returned overhead credit and funding was allocated to both home Colleges and the Center became a primary source of stress and uncertainty for the GCSC over the last few years. With the support of the Sustainability Office, the Vice President for Research, and the Central Administration, the GCSC recently moved to a more stable budget model where funding support is requested and granted in the same manner as Departments and Colleges on an annual basis. With this new model, returned overhead directly linked to specific faculty and projects will not be a part of the budget discussion. Rather, base funding will be supplied for the GCSC to continue to provide the service and resources that it has established over the last few years. The hope is that this new model will serve to invite faculty from all disciplines (not just those that actively engage in research that generates external funding) to engage with the Center. Another ongoing challenge is that departments may be concerned about losing funding from student credit hours to other departments if they encourage students (especially graduate students) to enroll in interdisciplinary certificate programs. However, to the extent that any given department gains enrollment in its sustainability-related courses as a consequence of students pursuing interdisciplinary certificates, there is potential for reciprocal, cooperative relationships among departments. Indeed, building this sense of interdepartmental cooperation is integral to the long-term success of interdisciplinary programs. To this end, the University of Utah has established several means for connecting faculty across campus and building a strong interdisciplinary community for sustainability. These initiatives are discussed in detail below.
Fostering systemic and resilient innovation Ongoing curriculum development and support The University of Utah provides ongoing support for interdisciplinary sustainability curricula in several ways. First, the GCSC, the administrative home for the graduate certificate in sustainability, is a hub of interdisciplinary activities. For example, every 2 weeks, the GCSC hosts a speaker as part of its seminar series. The seminar is open to all, but students enrolled
in the graduate certificate program are required to attend for one semester (during the off-weeks the students meet to discuss relevant materials). Thus, the seminar series serves to integrate interdisciplinarity, research, and education for graduate students. The GCSC also sponsors an annual research symposium where students and postdoctoral researchers present sustainability-related research. In addition to regular events, the GCSC provides the organizational effort to bring together interdisciplinary teams for educational, outreach, engagement, and research initiatives in sustainability. Second, in 2014, the University followed the lead of many other institutions across the country in offering a faculty workshop for integrating sustainability into their courses. Like the Ponderosa, Piedmont, and Chesapeake projects before it, the Wasatch Experience sought to bring a diverse group of faculty together to modify an existing course (or create a new one) to incorporate sustainability concepts. In order to broaden participating faculty’s perspectives of what sustainability Bis,^ the Wasatch Experience placed participants into interdisciplinary groups of four and assigned each group a mentor. Rather than ending at the close of the 2 day workshop, the Wasatch Experience was carried on throughout the academic year with cohort meetings and ongoing mentorship. The continuation of the program beyond the 2 days was intended to foster a stronger sense of community. An attempt to integrate the participants of the Wasatch Experience into the broader sustainability education community on campus was made by encouraging them to attend meetings of the Sustainability Faculty Learning Community (FLC). The Sustainability FLC—created in 2011 as a partnership between the Sustainability Resource Center and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence—is a third way that the University supports curricular innovation. The group meets monthly to discuss sustainability concepts and address issues of collective interest. Because the FLC is open to faculty and staff from across campus—and its existence is not contingent upon funding like the Wasatch Experience—it is a long-term, resilient campus network for supporting sustainability curricula. Indeed, the expense of the initial Wasatch Experience resulted in the decision to offer it only every other year. The Sustainability FLC, on the other hand, requires very little administrative support and budget allocation. Finally, to reward as well as incentivize sustainability leadership, the University partnered in 2015 with Alta Ski Area to create the Alta Sustainability Leadership Awards for students, faculty, and staff in four specific areas: Campus as a Living Lab, Sustainability Community Partnership, Sustainability Integration (i.e., integration into courses), and Sustainability Research. These awards give the university community a chance to celebrate the good work of our colleagues and at, the same time, subtly educate all faculty on campus of the interdisciplinarity of sustainability and its value to the administration.
J Environ Stud Sci
Assessment However, resilient innovation cannot occur without ongoing assessment and adjustment. This section provides an overview of indicators of success—and failure—of several key strategies implemented at the University of Utah to develop the sustainability curriculum. The certificates Although it is too soon to assess the success of the graduate certificate (it was offered for the first time in the spring of 2015), the Global Changes and Society course, which existed prior to being included as a core course for the certificate, has been highly successful. Its success is evident from student feedback as well as the tangible outcomes of student projects (see Walsh et al. 2015 for full details), such as improvements in University stewardship of Red Butte Creek on campus, and new campus programs to reduce emissions and promote air quality (e.g., new information in orientation, a rideshare program, a bike rental program, and a communications campaign). Disappointingly, the undergraduate certificate, after 3 years, can be described as unsuccessful. Its success was assumed likely because (1) national-level research showed significant growth in both enrollment and new sustainability programs at other institutions (Vincent 2009; Vincent et al. 2012) and (2) since 2003, the number of students majoring in Environmental and Sustainability Studies at the University of Utah has gone from approximately 110 to more than 300 in recent years, indicating strong student interest in the topic. Nevertheless, enrollment in the undergraduate certificate was extremely low in its first 3 years, with only five graduates and three currently enrolled. Consequently, at the end of the spring semester, 2015, a decision was made to rethink the program’s structure, requirements, and marketing strategy so that it might be reborn as a more attractive program. In hindsight, we see that the administrative placement of the program may have contributed to its floundering. At the time, its placement in the Office of Undergraduate Studies was seen as a win-win situation because it fulfilled the requirement that the program not be housed within a single disciplinebased unit, it required no additional allocation of funds, and it created a synergistic opportunity with another initiative being led by Undergraduate Studies: Integrative Studies and the BBlock U^ program through which undergraduates fulfill general education requirements by taking thematically related courses. However, because the certificate then became one of several integrated studies programs being promoted by Undergraduate Studies, it perhaps did not receive the level of focused attention and advertisement it needed. Without strong marketing, students might have hesitated to enroll in a novel program that had not yet been Btried and tested.^
Several lessons can be learned from this experience. First, finding a Bhome^ for a new program should focus on more than just finding a willing partner; there needs to be an assessment of how the placement of a program will potentially affect its success. Second, the undergraduate certificate was created with no administrative and marketing budget, yet programs cost money—to create, to administer, and to promote. Third, it is important to build in periodic reviews/evaluations of new programs and retain the flexibility to modify them. This was done for the graduate certificate but not for the undergraduate certificate. Fourth, as implied by the decision to redesign the undergraduate certificate, it could have been designed differently. As it was designed, it was essentially a junior version of the Environmental and Sustainability Studies major, and when the Environmental and Sustainability Studies minor was launched shortly after the certificate, these two programs did not adequately fill different niches. Fortunately, we anticipate that the graduate certificate will fare better because the administrative and financial aspects were given much more attention during the development of the program. Additionally, although the process to establish the graduate certificate took more than twice as long as it had for the undergraduate certificate, the process entailed much broader faculty participation and consultation. The process of soliciting feedback and building a strong support community across campus, although time-consuming, surely increased faculty buy-in for the program. The Wasatch Experience and FLC Regarding the Wasatch Experience, a key indicator of success is the proportion of faculty participants who integrated sustainability into their courses as a result of the workshop. This integration was evident in new course learning objectives (e.g., for a film class: students will Bidentify potential conflicts of sustainability and technological advances and produce an animation short that problematizes our current relationships with nature and focuses on local sustainability issues^) and activities (e.g., for a nutrition class: field trip to a local dairy to help students connect theoretical concepts to the real-world). Given that all but 1 out of 16 faculty participants successfully integrated some element of sustainability into their coursework within a 1-year period, we consider the Wasatch Experience a success, albeit imperfect. As a follow-up to the workshop, students from an Environmental and Sustainability Studies capstone course interviewed participants to identify important ancillary benefits, which included, as one professor noted, that students seemed more engaged and enjoyed their work more when sustainability became a focus. In addition, the ability to become a more effective teacher overall and the importance of building a network of similarly motivated educators were highlighted by the participants. Indeed, many of the faculty
J Environ Stud Sci
who participated in the Wasatch Experience began participating in the Sustainability Faculty Learning Community. These faculty networks—created through the GCSC, the Wasatch Experience, and the FLC—have produced many exciting outcomes, including new co-taught courses (e.g., Local Foods and Human Diets) and scholars groups (e.g., a food scholars group supported by the Deans of the College of Health and the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences as well as the Chief Sustainability Officer).
Conclusion Perhaps the most important lesson learned in the creation of courses, certificates, workshops, and learning communities is that change can occur through top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out approaches—but in all cases it requires building relationships. In contrast to small, residential colleges where faculty and students from different departments frequently cross paths—both literally and figuratively—large universities like the University of Utah must exert significant effort to build and maintain cross-campus interdisciplinary relationships. Such effort pays curricular dividends through improved faculty interdisciplinary awareness, skills, and collaboration, resulting in improved student learning, including skills for translating knowledge into real-world action (see Walsh et al. 2015). After all, sustainability problems do not manifest themselves according to the distinct disciplinary boundaries that human societies have constructed, and their solutions will be similarly transdisciplinary. One particular caution we have for would-be builders of broadly interdisciplinary sustainability programs is to not create an Borphan.^ A program that does not have broad support from existing institutional structures will lack a supporting clientele, and it may be viewed as a budgetary competitor or turf intruder. Orphan status will also make it very difficult to attract students to new degree and certificate programs. Without a network with advisors, department chairs, and cross-listed courses, combined with strategic demand creation and overlapping educational goals, new programs will have to invest tremendous resources in recruitment, advertising, and administration. However, ongoing support for sustainability curriculum development is about more than program budgets and administration; it is also about fostering an inclusive campus community for sharing ideas, collaborating on projects, co-teaching, and equipping and inspiring students to be agents of transformational change. The most promising long-term path for ensuring success of broadly interdisciplinary programs—especially at large, research-intensive universities—is through creating campuswide sustainability networks that bring students, faculty, and staff together. Such networks increase human and social
capital and contribute to transforming territorial mindsets into cooperative ones. Change happens through relationships— and the relationships we have built not only support interdisciplinarity and sustainability but also enrich our work as educators and scholars.
References Blevins, M. D. and Burian, S. J. (2012). Analysis of the sustainability culture in civil and environmental and mechanical engineering programs. Proceedings, American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, American Society for Engineering Education, 10–14 June 2012. Brinkhurst M, Rose P, Maurice G, Ackerman JD (2011) Achieving campus sustainability: top-down, bottom-up, or neither? Int J Sustain High Educ 12(4):338–354 Gosselin D, Parnell R, Smith-Sebasto NJ, Vincent S (2013) Integration of sustainability in higher education: three cases of curricular implementation. J Environ Stud Sci 3:316–330 Klahr D (2012) Sustainability for everyone: trespassing disciplinary boundaries. In: Bartels KA, Parker KA (eds) Teaching sustainability: teaching sustainably. Stylus, Sterling, pp. 19–30 Lander L (2015) Sustainability education: Is thinking the key? Sustain J Rec 8(1):27–31 McKeown, R., with assistance from C. A. Hopkins, R. Rizzi, and M. Chrystalbridge. (2002). Education for sustainable development toolkit. Version 2. Accessed 2 February 2015 from http://www. esdtoolkit.org. Miller TR, Baird TD, Littlefield CM, Kofinas G, Chapin III FS, Redman CL (2008) Epistemological pluralism: reorganizing interdisciplinary research. Ecol Soc 13(2):46 Redman CL (2013) Transforming the silos: Arizona State University’s School of Sustainability. In: Barlett PF, Chase GW (eds) Sustainability in higher education: stories and strategies for transformation. The MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 227–239 Rusinko CA (2010) Integrating sustainability in higher education: a generic matrix. Int J Sustain High Educ 11(3):250–259 Strober M (2010) Interdisciplinary conversations: challenging habits of thought. Stanford University Press, Stanford University of Utah Strategic Vision. (n.d.). Retrieved 8 August 2015, from http://president.utah.edu/7-core-commitments/ Vincent S (2009) Growth in environmental studies and science programs. Assoc Environ Stud Sci 2(2):1–4 Vincent S, Bunn S, Stevens S (2012) Interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability education: results from the 2012 census of four year colleges and universities. National Council for Science and the Environment, Washington DC Vincent S, Dutton K, Santos R, Sloane L (2014) Interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability education and research: leadership and administrative structures. National Council for Science and the Environment, Washington DC Walsh TC, Miller OL, Bowen B, Levine ZA, Ehleringer JR (2015) Sphere of sustainability: lessons from the University of Utah’s Global Changes and Society course. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, doi:10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452. 0000514 Warburton K (2003) Deep learning and education for sustainability. Int J Sustain High Educ 4(1):44–56
