3

Strengthening Sustainability Programs

Academic institutions play a critical role in meeting Earth’s sustainability challenges, with the potential—and imperative—to have a larger impact in the years to come. As described in Chapter 2, U.S. colleges and universities currently offer a variety of sustainability programs within a range of institutional arrangements. Workshop participants reflected this variety: they represented faculty, administrators, and undergraduate/graduate students from private colleges and state universities who were connected with discrete schools of sustainability or those within larger science, engineering, or social science units. Many noted the need to introduce sustainability concepts to students majoring/minoring in the field and also to those in other disciplines. Some students matriculate with plans to major or minor in the field, while others discover it when they get to campus. With interest high among current and incoming students and the ever-increasing need to balance societal trajectories between the lower bounds for human wellbeing and the upper environmental planetary boundaries, many higher education institutions are looking to create or expand their sustainability education programs and offerings.

INSTITUTION-WIDE CONSIDERATIONS

A symposium convened through the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015 took an institution-wide view of the successful design and implementation of sustainability programs (Hart et al., 2016). Five broad parameters, echoed in different ways by the symposium participants, provide a starting point from which to consider the specifics of what a sustainability pro-

gram could offer. These parameters articulated by symposium participants are summarized as follows:

1. Universities must realize that emphasizing solutions is essential when studying sustainability problems.
2. Building effective interdisciplinary collaborations in sustainability programs is challenging but must start early.
3. Academic efforts will be misaligned, misallocated, and mistaken in the absence of productive stakeholder partnerships.
4. The path to solutions requires innovation, risk tolerance, and persistence.
5. Universities must apply their research strengths to examine institutional initiatives and develop evidence-based principles to guide institutional transformation.

A common theme across these parameters is that leadership and support from the top is key—by university presidents, chancellors, deans, directors, and boards. Leadership commitment to sustainability can facilitate the interdisciplinary collaboration so vital to the field; provide resources, including support for underrepresented minority groups; and encourage innovation (Gordon et al., 2019; Boone et al., 2020).

Although many higher education institutions are looking to create or expand their sustainability programs, they often lack a clearly articulated statement about how they will deliver on that goal. The importance of support from top leadership and the growing interest in sustainability-related curricular offerings in higher education institutions leads the committee to three key areas of focus for sustainability education: competencies, content, and contextual application. The remainder of this chapter covers these aspects in greater detail.

COMPETENCIES AND CAPACITIES FOR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

The growth in sustainability programs at colleges and universities and the demand for graduates of these programs has led to concerted efforts to define the key competencies that sustainability graduates should acquire. The effort aligns with broader work to define competencies for 21st century learning. Recent work has also begun to highlight the importance of collective capacities that may enable sustainability transitions. It is imperative for learners to acquire both individually focused competencies through higher education coursework and curricula, and work toward the organizational and societal capacities necessary for sustainability pathways.

Wiek et al. (2011, 204) define competencies as “a functionally linked complex of knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable successful task performance and problem solving.” Within this definition, different fields have defined core competencies or program-learning outcomes that students should have after com-

pleting their programs of studies. Different researchers and organizations have identified at least eight key competencies as critical to advance sustainability: systems thinking competency, anticipatory competency, normative competency, strategic competency, collaboration competency, critical thinking competency, self-awareness competency, and integrated problem-solving competency (de Haan, 2010; Rieckmann, 2012; UNESCO, 2017; Wiek et al., 2011).

As competencies for sustainability reference the forms of awareness, knowledge, and learning necessary for students to acquire and act, a related review by Clark and Harley (2020) highlights collective and organizational capacities necessary for transitions toward greater sustainability. Capacity here refers to the intention, ability, and competence to act effectively (Franks, 1999; van Kerkhoff and Lebel, 2015; Clark et al., 2016), and in this sense is complementary to sustainability competencies, which focus more on needs for individual learners. Together, they can prepare learners to achieve transitions toward greater sustainability more effectively.

Clark and Harley (2020) identify seven critical capacities. They view them as collectively being likely necessary, but not sufficient, for more sustainable social-ecological trajectories of change. The seven organizational capacities are (1) the capacity to integrate research across disciplines, (2) the capacity to measure sustainable development, (3) the capacity to promote equity, (4) the capacity to adapt to shocks and surprises, (5) the capacity to transform the system onto more sustainable development pathways, (6) the capacity to link knowledge with action, and (7) the capacity to devise governance arrangements that allow people to work together in exercising the other capacities.

The authors identify the key characteristic of the contemporary global system as the intertwining of nature and society and focus on heterogeneity, nonlinearity, accumulation of power, and inequality. Based on this diagnosis, they suggest that pathways toward sustainable development are difficult to predict and require iterative strategies that combine thinking and doing. Such iterative strategies need to be dynamic, adaptive, and reflexive.

Explicitly defining competencies and capacities for sustainability higher education programs can strengthen their design, implementation, and outcomes. Helping learners strengthen their competencies for societal transitions can enable more effective societal sustainability outcomes. We accordingly discuss several frameworks that developers and leaders of sustainability education programs can draw upon as their institutional needs and strengths allow so as to incorporate the competencies and capacities needed for stronger sustainability education.

A number of studies describe the competencies needed for 21st century learners. The competency framework known as the Partnership for 21st Century Learning, or P21, highlights problem-based, cooperative, and experiential learning, with a special focus on information and communication technologies.¹ The

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¹ See Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21), available at http://www.battelleforkids.org/networks/p21, accessed on March 11, 2020.

Association of American Colleges and Universities has organized its framework around a set of “essential learning outcomes” in four broad areas: (1) knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world, (2) intellectual and practical skills, (3) personal and social responsibility, and (4) integrative and applied learning.² The National Research Council (NRC, 2012) defined cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal competencies: Cognitive competencies include the knowledge base of a given field, as well as critical thinking, analysis and problem-solving, spatial skills, and creativity. Interpersonal competencies include leadership, collaboration, communication, and teamwork. Intrapersonal competencies include intellectual openness (e.g., adaptability, cultural awareness, curiosity, responsibility), work ethic/conscientiousness, and self-regulation and stability.

In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine developed a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, education framework for K–16. It does not explicitly mention sustainability, but it characterizes service or community-based learning, a hallmark of sustainability education, as a “high-impact practice” (NASEM, 2018). Sustainability education includes the arts, humanities, business, policy, and other knowledge domains in addition to STEM subjects.

A substantive effort to describe competencies for sustainability education was conducted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Steering Committee on Education for Sustainable Development (UNECE, 2012). In their report, the Steering Committee described the type of learning inherent in education for sustainable development and tied these principles to five broad competencies: (1) learning to know (a way of thinking), (2) learning to be (a way of being), (3) learning to live together (a way of co-existing), (4) learning to do (a way of acting), and (5) learning to transform oneself and society. Education for sustainable development connects each of these competencies (learning to know, be, live together, do, and transform) with more specific outcomes for educators related to a holistic approach, envisioning change, and achieving transformation. The resulting framework lists these outcomes as “Competencies for Educators in Education for Sustainable Development,” which can serve as a useful reference for pedagogy (UNECE, 2012, 13).

Focusing more specifically on the field of sustainability, Evans (2019) suggests a set of five competencies: (1) systems competency, (2) critical and normative competency, (3) interpersonal and communication competency, (4) creative and strategic competency, and (5) transdisciplinary competency. In a different study, Eizaguirre et al. (2019) determines key sustainability core competencies by considering three different geographical regions (Europe, Latin America, and Central Asia) and the perspective of four different stakeholder groups (graduates,

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² See Association of American Colleges and Universities, “Essential Learning Outcomes,” available at https://www.aacu.org/leap/essential-learning-outcomes, accessed on March 11, 2020.

employers, students, and academics). Their assessment of stakeholder responses relies on exploratory factor analysis. They suggest factors related to sustainability include competencies such as commitment to the preservation of the environment, ability to act with social responsibility, and appreciation of and respect for diversity and multiculturality, among others.

During the committee’s workshop in February 2019, Rod Parnell of Northern Arizona University and the National Council for Science and the Environment described Wiek et al. (2011) as most widely read, best synthesized, and most cited framework for sustainability competencies (Parnell and Brundiers, 2019). In the research and problem-solving framework illustrated below (see Figure 3-1), Wiek et al. (2011) “embrace the convergence that sustainability education should enable students to analyze and solve sustainability problems, to anticipate and prepare for future sustainability challenges, as well as to create and seize opportunities for sustainability.” Fundamental to this strategy is teaching students the skills to develop scenarios of desired, plausible futures; to explore strategies or interventions to get there; and to make sure those transitions are effective and equitable. The interventions must be created with sufficient knowledge of the complex socio-ecological-technical systems dynamics both past and present that can define the problem, constrain or open possible interventions, and shape the direction and magnitude of the interventions. Scenario development should also explore the implications of maintaining the status quo (counterfactual) not only to understand the relative merits, or demerits, of interventions, but also to define the urgency and consequences of the problem or issue (e.g., fossil fuel use and climate change) under study. All stages depend on the ability of students to effectively engage with stakeholders and seek collaborative strategies that allow for effective and equitable decisions.

Wiek et al. (2011) point to five core competencies in sustainability education that can be linked to the framework and to each other (see Figure 3-2):

• Systems thinking competence: the ability to collectively analyze complex systems across different domains and across different scales, thereby considering cascading effects, inertia, feedback loops, and other systemic features. Educators and employers at the committee’s workshops repeatedly returned to the need for systems thinking as a key competency for sustainability students. Students need to understand that different disciplines that researchers integrate to address a given sustainability challenge use different research methods—each with different strengths and weaknesses. Identifying synergistic combinations of different methods from different disciplines is a major part of the “art” of sustainability research.
• Anticipatory competence: the ability to collectively analyze, evaluate, and craft rich “pictures” of the future related to sustainability issues and sustainability problem-solving frameworks. Decision science in the face of uncertainty is a key competency. These skills are tailored to address

key issues of sustainability, including unintended harmful consequences and intergenerational equity.

• Normative competence: the ability to collectively map, specify, apply, reconcile, and negotiate sustainability values, principles, goals, and targets. This involves applying ethical principles to available alternatives and embracing the value that sustainability is an inclusive goal involving individual, societal, and environmental well-being. It also recognizes that values guide behavior, which must be incorporated into developing effective sustainability strategies.
• Strategic competence: the ability to collectively design and implement interventions, transitions, and transformative governance strategies toward sustainability. Students need to understand theory of change approaches

• that focus on implementing solutions that have a high potential to scale up, as well as community-led design.

• Interpersonal competence: the ability to motivate, engage, and facilitate collaborative and participatory sustainable research and problem-solving. Workshop participants considered this a critical competence, and several objected to ascribing this competency with the descriptor of “soft skill.” Many discussed the need for conflict management, leadership, teamwork, and inclusiveness.

While critical to sustainability, the competencies are also deliberately general because of the inherent breadth of foci across different sustainability programs. Thus, developing learning activities to impart the competencies becomes the task of specific programs.

An iterative Delphi study engaging 14 international experts in sustainability education have extended the original Wiek et al. (2011) framework to include an implementation competency and an intrapersonal competency or mindset as additional key sustainability competencies (Brundiers et al., 2020). Given the solutions-orientation of sustainability higher education, the expert panel argued that knowing how to successfully implement interventions is a fundamental skill. The addition of an implementation competency begins to highlight the importance of collective and organizational capacities to sustainability higher education, and makes the complementarity between competencies and capacities more visible.

The intrapersonal competency or self-awareness competency is the ability to “be aware of one’s own emotions, desires, thoughts, behaviors, and personality, as well as to regulate, motivate, and continually improve oneself drawing on competencies related to emotional intelligence” (Brundiers et al., 2020). The intrapersonal competency allows students to be self-aware and position themselves in relation to others, which is critical for effective and empathetic stakeholder engagement.

Sustainability competencies identified in the different sustainability education research efforts align well with each other. Given the range of key competencies relevant to sustainability education, no single learner can expect to become an expert across the suite of competencies. This basic fact highlights the importance of both specialization and collaboration in sustainability education and practice. Future research on sustainability education needs to assess the pattern of evolution and degree of convergence among different sustainability educators about core competencies and their relationship with capacities as the field matures.

Without referring explicitly to different competency frameworks (e.g., Evans, 2019), many participants at the workshops conducted by the committee reflected similar themes. For example, one student participant considered the collaboration required across her courses as a valuable aspect of her sustainability education, while a faculty participant described designing projects that, among other things,

require students to master the strategic competence described above. End users, or employers, echoed the need for mastery of these competencies. For example, one employer said he hired staff members who can “connect the dots,” while another participant said she needed staff members who understand how to work with people with different values and points of view, so that they “check their righteousness at the door to come up with solutions.” As part of the interpersonal competence described above, change management and leadership skills are increasingly important for sustainability professionals (see Chapter 5).

Identifying core competencies for sustainability education can serve students, institutions, and the community, including employers. Wiek et al. (2011, 204) note that key competencies “provide the reference scheme for transparently evaluating student learning and teaching effectiveness,” as well as serve as a “critical reference point for developing the ambitious knowledge and skill profile of students expected to be future ‘problem solvers,’ ‘change agents,’ and ‘transition managers.’” Specifically, defining core competencies in sustainability education can serve the following purposes:

• To describe how activities in sustainability programs relate to larger frameworks, including the university as a whole in its goals for general education and to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other sustainability frameworks.
• To guide efforts of sustainability educators in identifying learning outcomes and foci of assessments.
• To differentiate sustainability graduates from other interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary programs.
• To prepare students for careers in sustainability and to be change agents for sustainability.
• To reflect the demands of industry for university graduates.
• To conduct sustainability research as graduate students.

Higher education sustainability programs that infuse their curricula with clear competency and capacity goals facilitate a shared understanding among educators, students, potential employers, and program evaluators of the intended outcomes by making these goals explicit. Thus, the committee makes the following recommendation to strengthen sustainability programs:

Implementation of this recommendation does not imply a specific curriculum or course sequence. Rather, students should engage in inclusive curricula that enable acquisition of knowledge and fluency in key core competencies, develop areas of content knowledge to the appropriate levels of breadth and depth, and have the opportunities to gain experience that helps them apply knowledge from courses in social and organizational contexts for practical insights.

CONTENT AREAS IN SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

In addition to learning competencies, the committee sought to understand the content knowledge sustainability students need to learn at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Workshop participants, a review of existing programs, and committee members’ own experience suggested a range of topics that are needed to understand and address 21st century sustainability challenges. The 17 UN SDGs, which address multiple dimensions of human well-being and environmental integrity, make clear that a broad range of knowledge and skills is required to solve urgent, complex problems and develop enduring solutions at global scales. As an indication of the relevant range of expertise, sustainability programs grant bachelor’s degrees of arts, science, engineering, design, business administration, and other fields at the undergraduate level, with a similar diversity at the master’s and doctorate levels. The range of expertise and content areas of sustainability higher education programs will also likely change over time given the ongoing rapid evolution of the sustainability field.

Similar to other interdisciplinary offerings in higher education, sustainability programs have to grapple with the question of how to balance content depth versus breadth (Pennington et al., 2020). Typically, depth in college and university programs is associated with demonstrated expertise in specific kinds of knowledge, often defined by longstanding academic disciplines (e.g., economics, biology, history). Depth can also be defined and demonstrated by mastery of specific methods (e.g., econometrics, systems modeling, spatial analysis), or forms of professional practice (e.g., architecture, accounting, surveying). Breadth is usually supported in colleges and universities by having students take courses beyond a disciplinary major that are linked thematically, often defined by general education requirements (e.g., critical thinking, literary, numeracy), to offer alternate epistemologies, viewpoints, and perspectives and to make students more “well rounded.” Breadth is also the demonstrated ability to link and synthesize different content knowledge and build a coherent framework to better comprehend the world. Students who have breadth strengths should be able to bridge disciplines and act as translators between experts with deep content knowledge in a specific field (Ashby and Exter, 2019). Broad interdisciplinary training is effective when learning is problem based or solutions oriented and relies on collaboration (Brassler and Dettmers, 2017).

Necessary content and depth and breadth of understanding depend in part

on the nature of sustainability programs. Degrees in sustainability typically focus on the integration of broad sets of content areas (breadth as strength), while degrees that incorporate sustainability into existing disciplines, such as sustainable engineering, require a strong emphasis on core content (depth as strength) but learned through a sustainability lens. At the graduate level, sustainability programs, which may engage students from a variety of undergraduate disciplines, have to provide a foundational understanding of sustainability principles, competencies, and capacities, but the expectation is for students to develop depth in specific content, methods, or approaches (including depth in specific competencies and capacities). For graduate programs where sustainability is an adjective to a defined discipline (e.g., sustainable architecture), depth in that discipline is expected, while sustainability can serve as a research problem framework. Figure 3-3 describes possible and approximate distribution of depth and breadth requirements for sustainability offerings based on program design (sustainability as focal discipline or as additive to another discipline) and graduate versus undergraduate levels. All programs should provide a basic understanding of sustainability frameworks, key competencies, and capacities, and embrace interdisciplinary models of learning and inquiry. Figure 3-3 is a schema that can be used as a guide to developing sustainability curricula that reflect both breadth and depth, but there is no single approach or framework that is suitable for all programs and institutions.

Of necessity, students in sustainability programs must choose among many important sustainability concepts and skills with the limitations on time and resources. Indeed, even sustainability programs may need to specialize in specific knowledge areas because sustainability connects in important ways to a vast domain of knowledge and practice. One gap identified by workshop participants is the lack of assessment about which specific knowledge areas lead to the greatest success for the graduates, their employers, and ultimately for larger society-wide sustainability goals such as the SDGs. A suggestion from several workshop participants would be to conduct a survey along the lines of the National Science Foundation’s survey of Ph.D.s or a survey of graduates 5 years out of school to understand which content areas are serving them best in their research and practice. The need for this kind of data is also discussed in Chapter 4 as part of an agenda for research on sustainability education programs.

Educators and end users at the workshops shared key perspectives on valued skills in sustainability. For example, an employer at the Austin, Texas, workshop valued systems thinking and analytical skills, but also urged students to learn the history and context of sustainability while in school. This topic is rarely taught in the workplace, she noted, “in the rush to find solutions.”

Considering the many advances in technology, several workshop participants noted that sustainability learners need to know data analytics, including working with big data and artificial intelligence. They do not need to be experts, one workshop participant pointed out, but they need to understand the capabilities and have the language to interact with experts. Another participant suggested that students should become familiar with data analysis tools and their application to diagnosing problems and developing effective solutions for sustainability goals. At the same time, workshop participants noted that students should understand the need for transparency and the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence and other technologies, so that “major social and cultural problems are not reinforced.”

A recurring workshop theme was the need to embed ethics and social justice in all courses, for determining course content and for determining which voices are at the table, who is setting up and teaching a program, and whose needs are being addressed. As discussed elsewhere in this report, identifying and understanding structural racism and discrimination, as well as the impact of varying socioeconomic backgrounds and differential access to essential human services, is essential to developing effective sustainability strategies and solutions. Several workshop participants agreed sustainability actions should authentically prioritize and integrate Indigenous and intergenerational knowledge and culture for sustained impact.

Another workshop participant recommended the teaching of sustainability principles as a core institutional requirement, no matter a student’s area of specialization, since “every student will have to deal with sustainability in his or her lifetime.” Examples of universities that have recently added a core requirement, typically from a wide range of course options (e.g., Sustainability Science, En-

vironmental Sociology, Environmental Engineering Capstone Design), include the following:

• Dickinson College, Pennsylvania: requires students to take one course coded either as sustainability connections or sustainability investigation.³
• Pacific University, Oregon: requires students to complete a course from an approved list or conduct a project approved by its Center for a Sustainable Society.⁴
• University of California, Merced: requires students to fulfill a sustainability “intellectual experience badge” by completing one course or co-curricular from an approved list.⁵

When asked about gaps in their education, several student panelists at the Santa Cruz, California, workshop remarked on the potential trade-offs of breadth versus depth in content areas. One panelist reported that she was discouraged from taking science classes at her undergraduate institution because the introductory courses were, in her view, “set up to weed out students from pre-med.” Another panelist said she consciously avoided business classes, only to find after graduation that she wished she decided otherwise given the utility of various business skills for many positions in sustainability.

While beyond the scope of this report, some participants cited lifelong learning, continuing education, and executive education as strategies to provide sustainability concepts to those already in the workforce. When one workshop participant wondered whether an executive education degree would cannibalize longer, more traditional programs, an administrator whose sustainability program offers both types of programs said they appeal to different audiences and do not detract from either one.

Workshop participants discussed the need to adapt courses to focus on thematic issues, such as ecosystems and climate change, supply chain evaluation, and corporate social responsibility. As described in the proposed Higher Education Sustainability Act of 2019 (S. 2928), participants noted it would be useful for students to understand practical applications of sustainability, including “energy management, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, green building, waste management, transportation, resilience, green workforce, and other aspects of sustainability that integrate the local community with multidisciplinary academic

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³ See Dickinson College’s requirements for degrees, available at https://www.dickinson.edu/info/20184/academic_offices_and_resources/2945/requirements_for_the_degree, accessed on March 11, 2020.

⁴ See Pacific University, Oregon, sustainability requirement, available at https://www.pacificu.edu/academics/academic-resources/core-requirements/sustainability-requirement, accessed on March 11, 2020.

⁵ See University of California, Merced, sustainability requirement, available at https://ge.ucmerced.edu/requirements#Badges, accessed on March 11, 2020.

programs and are applicable to the private and government sectors.”⁶ Additional information related to the legislation is described in Chapter 4.

The curricula in current sustainability programs encompass a wide range of content matter, and we cannot expect students to become experts in all areas. While some students will prefer to gain knowledge about a broad number of topics in sustainability, others will prefer to specialize in more targeted areas. In both cases, sustainability students and graduates will need to collaborate with others to address sustainability challenges, which can be more easily achieved if students have a baseline understanding of various content areas relevant to sustainability, including the history of sustainability, ethics and social justice, data analytics, business administration, sustainability science, and Indigenous knowledge and culture. Students would also benefit from an understanding of relevant sustainability frameworks, including the SDGs, through which their sustainability activities may support or inform. Therefore, the committee makes the following recommendation:

CONTEXTS AND APPLICATIONS OF SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

Competencies and capacities are essential elements in curriculum design. The curricula offered to students in sustainability education programs should explicitly develop relevant, clearly defined competencies and how they relate to the coursework included in the curriculum. Through scaffolding, students can learn basic concepts and skills in their early courses and then progress to more advanced concepts and applications (Lipscomb et al., 2010). Students should apply classroom learning to real-world problems to see links and build syntheses across subject matter, make inferences based on evidence and experience, envision solutions to sustainability challenges, and reflect on their role with collaborators in implementing these solutions.

Students need to understand and navigate trade-offs and conflicts and take advantage of synergies and co-benefits when attempting to achieve societal and organizational sustainability goals, whether in focusing explicitly on the SDGs, trying to achieve a “socially just and environmentally safe space” in the Doughnut framework, or implementing interventions to enhance other socioeconomic and environmental sustainability objectives.

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⁶ Higher Education Sustainability Act of 2019, S.2928, 116th Congress (2019–2020), available at https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s2928/BILLS-116s2928is.xml, accessed on June 8, 2020.

Sustainability Contexts

The 1990 Talloires Declaration (see Chapter 2) called for educational strategies that strengthened environmental literacy, collaboration for interdisciplinary approaches, and awareness of environmentally sustainable development. Over the last three decades, interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability education programs have continued to evolve and grow in the United States (see Chapter 2). The first higher education school of sustainability opened at Arizona State University in 2006 (see Box 2-2 in Chapter 2). In the past 15 years, sustainability programs have begun to offer courses, research, and other opportunities to help students understand the constructs of the natural environment and ecosphere, the human and social environment, the built environment, the intersections and interdependencies between these environments, and the implications for sustainable development.

Balancing competing needs and perspectives through well-grounded analysis is an essential component of sustainability education. Calling for change without understanding the trade-offs can compromise sustainability efforts. Students need to understand how institutions, policies, and programs drive the types and rates of resource utilization to satisfy human needs and wants. Additionally, they need to understand that capacity for effective partnerships between science and governance to address sustainability challenges is affected by “history, experience, and perceptions; quality of relationships (especially in suboptimal settings); disjunct across scales; power, interests, and legitimacy; and alternative pathways for environmental governance” (van Kerkhoff and Lebel, 2015). They should see that inequality in social structures affects access to services, political representation, and the distribution of benefits, costs, and risks and should understand that how these inequalities mandate deliberate steps to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusivity is central to successful sustainability solutions (Raworth, 2017).

Abson et al. (2017) sought to identify leverage points for influential sustainability efforts and noted that how knowledge is produced matters. They argue that an understanding of the following knowledge aspects is necessary for addressing sustainability challenges:

• How knowledge is compiled and integrated.
• Whose knowledge is legitimized and counts and to what extent.
• Who decides the criteria that are used to assess the available knowledge.
• Which formats of knowledge production at the science–society interface are most adequate for specific contexts and most promising to really fostering transformational change in practice.
• How knowledge produced in a specific context can be generalized or transferred to other contexts.
• How the kind of knowledge that is needed in any given situation is identified.

In sustainability programs, students need to understand and be able to judge and act critically to balance different approaches, particularly when prioritizing human and social development creates tension with environmental goals. For instance, students should understand how the built environment is shaped by the requirement of services and infrastructure to meet human needs and wants, and that these services affect the natural environment and ecosphere. Indeed, this is one example of the importance of knowing how to identify and work with the interactions between the SDGs (Nilsson et al., 2016; Pradhan et al., 2017).

The global policy context for sustainable development is an integral part of sustainability higher education programs, including the United Nations 2030 Agenda; the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Community of Practice structure; and reporting norms such as the Carbon Disclosure Project and the Environmental, Social, and Governance factors for evaluating sustainable finance.

The information gathered from workshop participants and the literature suggest that students need to understand the implications of global differences in national incomes, endowments of natural resources, current standards of living, and trade-offs between the economic North and South necessary to achieve and sustain progress on global sustainability.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Experiential education provides learners with the relevant experiences—internships, capstones, practicums, problem- or solutions-focused research, and other opportunities in a real-world setting—that strengthen and revise concepts and knowledge acquired in the classroom (Eyler, 2009). The benefits include a deeper understanding of subject matter, the capacity for critical thinking, application of knowledge in complex or ambiguous situations, and recognition of the value of lifelong learning, including learning in the workplace. Experiential education encourages students to apply their learning, and it should include an element of reflection on those experiences (Aktas, 2015; Domask, 2007).

Many sustainability education programs already offer experiential learning opportunities, such as the Coastal Science and Policy Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz (see Box 3-1). Workshop participants stressed the value of experiential education for their students, and students also identified “immersive experiential learning” as a valuable aspect of their education.

Experiential learning in sustainability takes place in U.S. communities (often near institutions) and other countries; in private, government, or nonprofit organizations; and on the university campus itself. Students may embed themselves in a local transportation agency, a global corporation, an organic farm, a school, a social justice nonprofit—the possibilities are nearly limitless. Several participants, including faculty, students, and alumni, said their students had even started or maintained sustainable businesses. Some innovation competitions and

accelerators for social enterprises encourage or specifically target higher education students with sustainability foci, such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Circular Economy Programme and Pioneers, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s Oceans Solution Accelerator, and the Bridge Spark Fund.⁷ Some workshop participants highlighted the excitement generated by the maker movement that lets students apply educational concepts through the creation and sale of products.

Many institutions offer experiential opportunities in the Global South for visiting and local students through study-abroad programs. For example, the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Thailand offers U.S. college students a “People, Ecology, and Development” semester to focus on “understanding the broader challenges of sustainable development though experiential studies of specific landscapes and cultures in the villages, mountains, coasts and islands throughout Thailand” (Ritchie, 2013). Africa Nazarene University in Kenya fosters student engagement with farmers in eastern Kenya to mitigate the impact of drought. Students exchange information about the needs and available resources, knowledge, and traditions of the community before suggesting solutions.⁸

Workshop participants also described capstone experiences that are offered at the end of a course of study, as well as experiences for students to learn and apply their knowledge over a semester, or follow a co-op schedule that alternates between work and study semesters. The idea of a “spiral of learning,” in which a student may take a course, have a field experience, then return to the classroom, perhaps several times, was noted by workshop panelist Pamela Matson of Stanford University as a way to strengthen both classroom and real-world learning. Panelist Yuwei Shi from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey noted his program transitioned from a capstone experience toward the end of a curriculum to one that takes place at the start of the program. The switch, he said, has enriched learning and allowed students to form a collaborative cohort earlier.

Several employers and end users at the workshops discussed how they designed programs or managed students participating in them and/or have hired students who had been through experiential education at their own or other organizations. Employers expressed the value of exposing students to the realities of working environments before they graduate. For example, as one participant noted, “Students need to take what they’ve learned and create something digestible for a chief financial officer.”

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⁷ See Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circular Economy Programme, available at https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/our-work/activities/from-linear-to-circular/circular-economyprogramme;Sustainable Ocean Alliance, available at https://www.soalliance.org; and Bridge Collaborative’s Bridge Spark Fund, available at https://bridgecollaborativeglobal.org/what-we-do/fund, all accessed on March 11, 2020.

⁸ For more information about Africa Nazarene University’s Science and Technology Program, see https://www.anu.ac.ke/school-department/school-science-technology, accessed on March 12, 2020.

The quality of the experiential education program matters (Eyler, 2009). It should be more than checking off a box indicating that a student has had an internship in organization X or completed a research project in community Y. With this in mind, the committee sought to examine successful experiential learning programs in sustainability and consider how they are engaging to the student, educationally valuable, and useful to the relevant community or organization.

Community Learning

Many workshop participants warned about not just conducting research or seeking to “help” a community but also collaborating and co-learning with community members, whether in an adjacent neighborhood or an ocean away. Globally, Ritchie (2013) observed, “Working with marginalized communities in the Global South can present significant challenges—how to address inherent disparities in power and knowledge, and how, especially in a hierarchical society like Thailand, to ensure that local communities are not exploited for education, but rather are empowered through education.” Similar challenges can easily surface in a community adjacent to a college or university. Examples of community-led design of sustainability programs are highlighted in Box 3-2.

To avoid disparities in power and resources, it is important to engage with local communities sincerely and authentically in designing and teaching relevant sustainability courses, so that they are “not exploited for education, but rather are empowered through education” (Ritchie, 2013).

Another issue raised by participants at the workshops and of concern to the committee relates to accessing experiential learning opportunities. Internships are valuable learning and résumé-building experiences, but there are very real barriers to participation, especially for students from low-income families and those who have responsibilities for other family members: the interns can be unpaid or underpaid, require one’s own transportation, or necessitate additional expenses to live in another location. These realities hamper students who need to earn income and reduce expenses. Several solutions were suggested, but this is a central challenge for improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in sustainability education (see also Chapter 4). One employer located in a remote area said her organization sought more centrally located projects where students could intern outside their office location. Several educators described efforts to find external funding to supplement compensation, especially for lower-income students who want experience in nonprofits and community-based organizations but have limited finances. One example could include the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program that provides indirect funding for undergraduate students to participate in research (NSF, 2020).

Service Learning

While experiential education is increasingly understood as an effective pedagogy combined with classroom learning, service learning also provides rich educational opportunities in sustainability. Service learning is “a form of education in which students work with community partners to identify and address community needs in an academic setting, together with structured reflections designed to achieve desired learning outcomes” (Jacoby, 2015; Coleman et al., 2017). Coleman et al. (2017) conducted one of the few experiments about service-learning projects focused on climate change as a tool to teach sustainability concepts. Based on a joint effort between four college courses in different disciplines, they found that students in these classes improved their understanding of climate change, how it affects their respective disciplines, and personal responsibility for addressing climate change. Because sustainability is a complex and interdisciplinary field, service-learning projects that focus on the intersection of climate change and a given discipline can serve as a rich opportunity for students to learn about and engage with relevant sustainability issues in their field and outside the classroom. Accordingly, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education provides credit for the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment and Rating System, or STARS, report for service-learning projects with a focus on sustainability.

Organizational Learning

In addition to applying their learning in diverse experiential contexts that include community and service learning, it is crucial for students to have a systematic understanding of how organizations learn and change, and of the organizational contexts in which many of them will pursue their career goals. A vast literature on the subject distinguishes how organizations learn. This literature contrasts organizational learning in relation to theories of agents and choice, conflict and bargaining, and competitive selection (Fiol and Lyles, 1985; Levitt and March, 1988; Miller, 1996). Theorists of organizations suggest that organizational learning relies on routines and is path dependent and goal oriented (March and Olsen, 1975; Nelson and Winter, 1982). Organizational learning denotes both accumulation of organizational memory and changes in organizational knowledge, whatever the source of knowledge (Chadwick and Raver, 2015; Lozano, 2014; Schulz, 2017). Recent research has highlighted the role of leadership in particular in organizational learning (Berson et al., 2015).

Because actions and strategies of business and civil society organizations are so critical for pathways toward sustainability, sustainability curricula should include both critical conceptual grounding for their students and opportunities for practical application of such learning in organizational settings. On the one hand, students of sustainability need a theoretically informed and conceptual understanding of organizational change to comprehend and appreciate the pressures and opportunities that their organizations confront when pursuing sustainability strategies. These organizational contexts likely constrain or provoke the choices that strengthen sustainability. On the other hand, students also need familiarity with how organizations work, learn, and change through practical experience in organizational contexts—whether through apprenticeship, internships, or other opportunities to engage decision makers and leaders of diverse organizations.

At the Santa Cruz workshop, student participants discussed what they had learned about organizational change theory. At least one student had taken an undergraduate course, although she said that the education she gained in that regard was through her role in organizing for fossil fuel divestment. All of the student panelists agreed that understanding how to intervene in organizations to fundamentally change structures was essential to their sustainability efforts.

Rich and diverse experiential opportunities for students’ organizational learning will require educational institutions to collaborate more closely with business, government, and civil society organizations. Many already do, enabling productive interactions for their students, from local to global levels. Common to the success of programs that exist is the leveraging of at least one of the sustainability core competencies, such as systems thinking, and involvement of at least one sustainability content area, such as data use and analysis. These opportunities provide students with valuable first-hand experiences in sustainability in the need to find the synergies and consider the trade-offs that continually occur in

the real world. Given these benefits but mindful of the equity-related obstacles to overcome, the committee makes the following recommendation:

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