Adapting and Enhancing Sustainability Integration Worksheet

This worksheet is meant to identify opportunities and strategies to further integrate sustainability into curriculum. It is intended to build off strengths from current integrations of sustainability and identify opportunities further integration, particularly given the rapidly evolving nature of sustainability-related challenges and transitions. It poses a series of questions, including revisiting previous steps, to identify any potential gaps that have emerged as sustainability continues to grow in relevance and to develop strategies to manage challenges anticipated and experienced.

Some considerations to make:

• The questions are broad, in that they could be applied to any program of study, and as such, some questions may vary in relevance for any individual program.
• The questions do not depend on any particular definition or understanding of sustainability, but could draw in many different perspectives or focus on specific topics.
• It is likely valuable to gather a range of opinions and insight into the answers to each question, through group discussion or brainstorming.
• These questions do not need to be answered in this worksheet. They could be part of a whiteboard activity, post-it note session, or open conversation.

Users of the worksheet will likely find it valuable to start by determining first if there are adaptations to current integrations that should be made. For this, it is helpful to review reflections and feedback from the evaluate step to understand strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Considering the reflection completed in Step 4 – Evaluate,

• What changes can/should be made to prepare students more effectively with the relevant sustainability knowledge, skills, and values?  
• What would you do differently if you were to repeat the integration? Why do you believe that will be more effective?
• Can you consider solutions peers may have taken to address similar challenges and barriers?

Considering the reflection above,

• Are there steps in the process of integrating sustainability that we can now revisit? Can we go deeper in our reflection of these steps?
• Reconsider your understanding of sustainability: has the term sustainability evolved to mean something new to you and/or your field? How has sustainability been understood more broadly? Are there other themes or topics within sustainability to consider/reconsider?
• Have connections to sustainability in your discipline/field grown? How does industry consider sustainability, and has this evolved? Are there changing regulations related to sustainability in your discipline/field? Has your discipline/field begun to address sustainability topics in a new or a deeper way? Is sustainability a higher priority for faculty, students, staff, or professionals in the field?
• Can sustainability be more deeply integrated into the academic program? Are there opportunities for multiple touchpoints related to sustainability? Do students learn more about disciplinary connections to sustainability as they progress through their studies? Are there opportunities for students to engage more deeply in sustainability content, if interested? Do students engage with different perspectives and aspects of sustainability?
• How can we more effectively evaluate the integration of sustainability? Are there assessments for students that can be used to track growth in understanding year over year? Are there standards that should be met? Are there changes in the co-op placements students have? What systems do we have for student, graduate, and co-op employer feedback? What systems do we have to understand impact a change in curriculum has?

As noted, the above questions are not exhaustive and could be explored through many different formats and settings. If you are interested, the Sustainability Office could also help facilitate a session to walk through some of these questions and topics.

If you'd prefer, download a pdf of this reflection guide.