Sustainability: Going Beyond Science Classes

Faculty Across Vast Departments Are Infusing Sustainability into Curriculum

by Lori Gilbert

Stanislaus State offers sustainability-focused courses from the role of nature in U.S. history to climatology. Agriculture majors may choose concentrations in sustainable agriculture and agricultural and environmental resource management.

The lessons don’t end there though. Students are introduced to sustainability in more than 150 courses, some because professors across disciplines and departments participated in a sustainability Faculty Learning Community (FLC).

Offered through the University’s Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (FCETL), the course has been held three times by program FCETL Director Shradha Tibrewal and Sustainability Coordinator Wendy Olmstead, with 31 faculty representing 19 disciplines attending.

“When we, as a campus, launched our sustainability efforts, we looked for initiatives that would provide the greatest impact,” Olmstead said. “Our Council for Sustainable Futures agreed that the single most impactful initiative we could employ was to infuse sustainability into our curriculum. Using the University of Vermont’s highly successful teaching sustainability FLC as a model, Shradha and I designed the FLC to help faculty infuse sustainability into the curriculum of any academic discipline.”

Participants have applied sustainability into musical expression of son jarocho, third-grade civics, visual arts and green correctional facilities.

“As an English teacher, I had this misconception about sustainability,” said seventh-year lecturer Karen Zandarski, who was part of the first and second FLCs. “I thought that was for scientists, not for me. That’s what was exciting about it.”

Understanding the huge umbrella of sustainability and its presence in environmental, economic and social justice issues enabled Zandarski to better focus topics for students in her sophomore-level critical thinking writing course.

Students’ writing on the death penalty or abortion never advanced behind high-school level work, so Zandarski banned those topics.

By making sustainability a thematic focus, she said, it helped her better develop the course, and her students’ writing.

“This semester, I had students propose writing on the topic of abortion, because it can fall under the social pillar of sustainability,” Zandarski said. “They have to frame it in a way that looks at how to solve this problem in a way that benefits people. It changes the way students think about the topic.”

Having taken the FLC, Zandarski said she gained greater understanding, and an ability to help her students discover the depth of sustainability beyond environmental issues.

Not that the environment isn’t a part of the conversation. It’s just that a topic like recycling becomes much more substantive than what she always thought of as “reduce, re-use, recycle.”

“It was so exciting for me to think about sustainability in terms of that umbrella and the three pillars (environment, economics and social justice),” Zandarski said. “This is a critical thinking class. Students are supposed to move beyond the surfacelevel argument, and this allowed me to help them do that.”

Faculty ingenuity is limitless when it comes to incorporating sustainability in different subjects.

“What I found most intriguing and really touched me is I was able to think in a more cross discipline way,” said nine-year sociology lecturer Barbara Olave, who was part of the spring 2020 FLC that began in person and finished online. “I teach sociology, so this is right in line with what I do, but that may not be true for an English or accounting class. We were able to see the very creative ways that people in these other disciplines are able to do this. I found that fascinating.”

For her part, Olave, a Stan State graduate who returned to college in her 40s, found incorporating sustainability lessons into her introduction to sociology class a natural fit.

“As one of the main problems facing us, I really feel the issues of sustainability, and climate change and climate justice really should be front and center in our work,” Olave said.

Her FLC read “Braiding Sweetgrass,” by botanist and Native American Robin Wall Kimmerer, who shares how she successfully intertwines her scientific knowledge with the traditional ways of her people.

“The moment I started reading that book I felt it would be a really great way to contrast the world we’ve produced with something completely unfamiliar in terms of values and ideology,” Olave said. “There were so many points across the curriculum for my class where I could do that. I sprinkled in maybe five chapters from the book.”

Introductory sociology, Olave said, always includes one chapter dedicated to environmental issues.

By using “Braiding Sweetgrass” Olave was able to expand on that model.

The reaction from students is what makes Olave enjoy teaching the introductory course.

“Students love, often for the first time, having a different way of thinking,” Olave said. “I love being that hook. I love students opening their eyes and thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve never even thought of that, but it makes sense as it relates to my life.’”

Incorporating the lessons into the intro class was only the beginning.

“I feel I got a really good start. Now I’m looking for more seamless integration in my class,” Olave said. “My end goal is to be able to do it with all my classes. It seems like a very natural thing to do."

Our Council for Sustainable Futures agreed that the single most impactful initiative we could employ was to infuse sustainability into our curriculum.

WENDY OLMSTEAD