As clearly stated in the UBC Plan, we are committed to providing students with exceptional learning environment to “enhance their personal development and enable them to contribute and lead in a global society”. (UBC Plan; Student Learning). In the societal context where we are faced with immanent global issues, we aspire to produce graduates who are engaged and responsible global citizens. Recently, the University Sustainability Initiative (USI) has developed the sustainability attributes (http://sustain.ubc.ca/courses-teaching/sustainability-attributes) proposing UBC students to have four attributes (i.e., holism, sustainability knowledge, awareness & integration, and acting for positive change) related to sustainability background.
The APSC Sustainability Pathway Engagement initiative seeks to develop strategies on the engagement and consultation towards a sustainability pathway in the faculty. Naoko Ellis (CHBE) and Susan Nesbit (CIVL) have received funds from UBC USI to facilitate the process with the support of USI for 2014-2016.
A Sustainability Pathway is a collection of sustainability-oriented courses and experiences that students pursue alongside their disciplinary major. Pathways may be embedded within existing programs, or offered as a separate entity such as aminor.
Project goals:
- To assess the interest and support for a sustainability pathway in APSC by students and faculty
- To develop a sustainability pathway learning outcomes
- To build strategies for implementing undergraduate (UG) curriculum changes
- To build strategies for creating pathways at the graduate (GRAD) levels
Purpose of engagement:
- Obtain high-level and ground-up support for the pathway strategies
- Build consensus across schools of what the proposed strategies should look like
