Curriculum Revisions

The second component of the project, “Accelerating Climate Change for the Next Generation of Professionals” involves finding ways to integrate climate change education with a particular focus on climate adaptation, into the curriculum of University of Waterloo’s professional degree programs, including Accounting, Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Systems Design Engineering and Planning. All of these programs have fairly rigid curriculum and competency requirements defined by their professional accreditation bodies. 

Each school or department involved in the project has established a curriculum working group that is reviewing the overall program and existing courses and looking for opportunities to either develop new courses or integrate new content or ways of thinking into existing courses.  The working groups are also exploring various pedagogical approaches, bearing in mind that teaching/learning about climate change may require particular instructional strategies to inspire hope and support students as they grapple with climate emotions.  This curriculum work also provides opportunities to rethink how to incorporate Indigenous perspectives and equity and justice considerations into the curriculum as they relate to climate change and other issues. 

The curriculum work is very much aligned with professional associations’ evolving competency development work as they too grapple with the necessity of integrating sustainability and climate considerations into licensing requirements for professionals. One of the key resources for the climate change curriculum and professional competency work is Design by Resilience’s Canadian Climate Action Competency Framework (CACF V2).  

In addition to the disciplinary curriculum work being undertaken by University of Waterloo’s departments, we are also exploring opportunities for experiential interdisciplinary climate learning, both within the curriculum (e.g. as final interdisciplinary capstone projects) as well as extra-curricular initiatives such as design challenges and hackathons that bring together students from different programs.  

Watch this space to learn more!