Workshop brings sustainability into focus for faculty
Green curriculum, green campus, green city. That was the name of a faculty workshop hosted this month by East Carolina University’s sustainability office, and by all accounts the experience lived up to the name.
Chad Carwein, who has overseen sustainability efforts at ECU over the last decade as its sustainability manager, said this was the second year of the workshop, which was modeled after the Piedmont Project at Emory University. Aimed at exploring how faculty can meaningfully integrate sustainability into the classroom, the two-day event started by taking a look at efforts on campus, in Greenville and in eastern North Carolina.
Participants got an on-site overview of the green stormwater infrastructure at Town Creek Culvert and walked the ECU Tree Trail, an app-guided tour of more than 40 significant trees on the university campus.
The workshop “puts a lot of emphasis on place and where the university is located, and utilizing that local or regional environment as a classroom,” Carwein said. “We really want to get people outside and get them reconnected to nature within our own community and on our own campus.”
Back inside, discussions centered on how sustainability theories can be built into classes across a broad range of subject matter.
“We’re all working toward the same goal, and that’s to make sure that our students graduate with sustainability literacy, that they are literate in sustainability and the environmental challenges that society faces, but also teaching the systems thinking approach that is required to solve environmental issues,” Carwein said.
The workshop provides faculty members with the tools to teach sustainability through the lens of their own areas of expertise.
“We’ve had folks from engineering, English, construction management, recreation sciences, public health and more,” he said. “It’s really neat when you get to see all those people come together and break down the silos that are traditional at large institutions like ECU, getting people to network and talk about what it means to them.”
Chad Carwein, sustainability manager, discusses restoration efforts at the Town Creek Culvert with ECU faculty members. (Contributed photo)
Dr. Craig Becker, professor of health education and promotion, participated in last year’s workshop and returned this year as a presenter and explained how he added sustainability to the syllabus for a health theory class, requiring students to attend five sustainability events and submit a reflection applying behavioral theory to meaningful sustainable actions.
The students, he said, produced some great ideas, from how to reduce plastic usage to embracing more sustainable dietary habits.
“It certainly can affect student success, because they have to gain skills, and whatever job they do, sustainability is going to be part of the job,” Becker said. “It’s going to be something that they’re going to have to address in some place along the road.”
Becker encouraged all faculty members to ask their students to get involved in the effort to create a culture of sustainability at ECU.
“If you ask students to get involved, they will,” he said. “They want to be involved. They want to do things. Once you have that culture, everywhere they go, they hear that message, but in different ways.”
The workshop is designed to accommodate 10 participants each year, and participants who submit a new or revised syllabus incorporating what they’ve learned receive a $400 stipend supported by the provost’s office. Carwein said there’s already a waitlist that could fill another session, so the odds are good that even more faculty members will be brushing up on how to add a little green to ECU’s purple and gold.