Welcome to the Tuesday Teaching Tip, an easy-to-implement tool that you can use immediately in your classroom teaching. 

 

TUESDAY TEACHING TIP: Linking to Sustainability and Current Events

It’s easy for us and our students to get lost in the weeds of our disciplines, missing the connections to big picture issues that motivate us to do important things in life. Do you want students to see how your course material is relevant to one of the greatest challenges of our time: making our economy, environment, and society more sustainable? In honor of Earth Day this Wednesday, we challenge you to introduce the concept of sustainability into your course and how it relates to your discipline or course topic by having students analyze a recent news story.  

Here’s one way to do it:

• Briefly introduce the concept of sustainability, using one or more of the models in these slides for all disciplines or specifically for engineering.
• Find (or challenge students to find) a recent news story about sustainability that is related to your course. Video stories often work well because they are especially accessible to students. Or you could choose a data-rich print-based article if that’s more relevant to your course.
• Have students analyze how the story reflects common ways in which the news media cover sustainability issues related to your course. What sources get to speak, what topics are covered, and from whose perspective? Who, what, and which places are missing from the story? Does the story address all three dimensions of sustainability – environmental, economic, and social – or privilege one of them? How could you revise the story to better inform the public?
• Introduce students to some good sources of sustainability-related news in your field and encourage them to incorporate them into their weekly news diets. For example, you might introduce them to Grist, Environmental News Network, Environmental Health News, E - The Environmental Magazine, Solutions Journal, Inside Climate News, or relevant sections of The Guardian, The New York Times, BBC, or NPR.

DID YOU DO IT?

Let us know how it went. We would love to hear your feedback about how you implemented today’s Tuesday Teaching Tip in your classroom. Click here to fill out our 3-question survey. The survey is anonymous, but if you choose to enter your name, you’ll be entered in a drawing at the end of the quarter to win a new book from Faculty Development!

 

UPCOMING EVENTS 

• CAFE: Hacking the Publication Process on Thursday, April 23 RSVP
  
  
• Faculty Advising: Basics & Best Practices on Monday, April 27 RSVP and Tuesday, April 28 RSVP
  
  
• Beyond the Major: Advising About the Core & More on Thursday, April 30 RSVP

 

WANT TO READ A LITTLE MORE?

• Teaching Sustainability DRT Page
• SCU Center for Sustainability - 23 Ways to Integrate Sustainability into a Course

To learn more about how to integrate sustainability into your courses and earn a stipend for doing it, apply to join SCU’s summer workshops on teaching sustainability across the curriculum.

 

This week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip was prepared by Chad Raphael on behalf of the SCU Center for Sustainability, Faculty Development, and the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Missed a teaching tip? Read them all here. 

And check out our full calendar of CAFEs and other Faculty Development events.