Monday Miscellany

Last Friday (Nov. 5) a small group of environmentally-minded faculty met to discuss "green" classroom initiatives. We spent time talking about "paperless" courses, and wondered what truly is more environmentally-friendly: using less paper or using the technology less (or do our students have their computers on permanently anyway)? We also spent some amount of time talking about the various "paperless" platforms such as blackboard, traditional e-mail, and other tools such as "moodle" and "desire to learn" which are not largely used at SMU. We thought that perhaps more dialogue between the Continuing Education office and those who teach traditional on-campus courses could unfold, so that we might learn how to be more efficient in our desire to deliver "greener" courses. It was expressed that at present, we do not have the technology that is genuinely "green" to prompt some to go a more paperless route. Perhaps it is coming, as this article, sent to me by Tim Stretton in the History Department, discusses advances in low-power computing. We also briefly discussed e-texts, and ways to avoid unnecessary textbook selections and ways to be more innovative with publishers. I have a feeling that there will be much more to talk about on the latter in the coming months and years ahead.

It was tempting to sway the conversation into the pedagogical realm, although this meeting was intended to look at our ways of delivering green courses as opposed to the content within them. One theme that emerged that I personally want to spend some time researching and thinking about is; given the gloomy forecasts for our environment, how do we avoid turning our students off or making them cynical? Maybe some of you have thoughts on this? Both Anne Marie Dalton and I have recently returned from academic conferences related to environmental sustainability. I will be sharing some of the highlights from the conference I attended in the weeks ahead. And perhaps Anne Marie could give a guest blog on hers. So stay tuned for that as well!

In the meantime, here is another interesting resource from Anne Marie for those who are interested:

Mother Pelican is a journal on sustainable human development. It is named in honor of the Human Being that "Mother Pelican" represents. The November 2010 issue has been posted:

What is the Root Cause of Unsustainable Development?

"How green is your classroom" reusable bag lunch tomorrow

There are several faculty signed up for tomorrow's reusable bag lunch to discuss the topic of "greening" the classroom.

The theme of our discussion is “How Green is your Course?” We will explore questions such as:

Are there specific initiatives that you take to cut down on your use of paper, energy, resources, etc. for your course?

Do you make a conscious effort to be "environmentally-friendly" in the classroom?

Is it possible to teach a paper-less course?

Join faculty from across the disciplines to informally learn from one another, and to share innovative ideas about the things that we can be doing in our classrooms. Even if you have rarely thought about being "environmentally-friendly" in your teaching, this is a great opportunity to hear what others are doing.

Date: Friday, November 5, 2010

Time: 11:30am – 12:30pm

Place: CAID Studio Classroom, AT212

I am just back from the International Greening Education Event, which was held in Karlsruhe, Germany. There, 80 participants from 30 nations talked about how faculty can more meaningfully integrate sustainability into the curriculum at institutions of higher education. I will be sharing my notes and resources from that event in the weeks ahead. But for now, we will look at our delivery of our courses regardless of content. I came across this article which explores how one group of students felt about having a paperless course. At the end of the article, there are links to a number of other studies (pdfs) that also explore whether we can really deliver paperless courses.

"Earthcasts"

Thanks to Anne Marie Dalton in Religious Studies for sharing this fantastic resource with me:
The new Earthcast series are live interactive web events from sustainability experts. Each month Earthscan offers a free one-hour webcast on a different topic: click here to take a look!

The next event will take place tomorrow: October 21, 2010 on the topic of "Sustainability Literate Leadership". If you miss that one, there are many interesting topics coming up in November and December. As well, the previous topics are all archived, including a wide range of youtube videos. These can be useful for both teaching methodologies (e.g. on November 11 there will be a web event on how to talk about climate change) and for course content.

Greening the curriculum

Greening the curriculum can refer to the content of the course but also the delivery of a course regardless of the subject matter. Have you ever considered using an e-textbook perhaps? Or have a paperless course? We will be having a "reusable bag lunch" on Friday, November 5 in Atrium 212 (11:30-12:30), with more information to come in the weeks ahead.
In the meantime, I found this article about a new way to package an electronic textbook from multiple sources that looks very promising. I will personally be looking into this for future courses that I will be teaching!

"Green IT"

The October issue of University Affairs includes an article on "Watching the watts with green IT". SMU has been working on some of the initiatives that are mentioned in this article, but there are many more things we could do. As the green IT coordinator at the University of Waterloo points out, "The biggest challenge is changing behaviours".
There are some great tips on how to compute green, including printing with a so-called "eco-font", which uses 25% less toner or ink and is perfect for drafts of large documents.

On Friday, November 5, I plan to host a "Reusable Bag Lunch" so we can discuss green initiatives in the classroom (and in our offices!). More information on this will be coming your way via e-mail shortly, so stay tuned!

Early September Miscellany

In the off-chance that any of you have any spare time during the month of September, you might want to take a peek at this article on "Going Green" at Queen's University. Wynn provided me a hard copy of the Alumni magazine and it was an interesting (and short!) article. I always find good ideas and inspiration in learning about what others are doing. Hopefully others can likewise learn from us at SMU!

I also wanted to share a fantastic web site with you that Anne Marie had mentioned at our August lunch meeting: take a few minutes to look over the Earth Charter Initiative.
The mission of the Earth Charter Initiative is to "promote the transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework that includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace."

A number of us met for lunch on August 31 and discussed sustainability across the curriculum at SMU, including AASHE's "Call to Action" on Sustainability in Higher Education. We went through each of the recommendations for institutions of higher education and reviewed how we felt SMU was doing on each of the dozen recommendations. We felt that we were doing well on at least half of them but that there was much more we could be doing. If you have not received these from me and would like our list of action items, please send me an e-mail: cconrad@smu.ca

In the meantime, happy start to the Fall Semester of 2010! And remember.....no title pages for your students essays! ;)

SMU will soon be offering a Bachelor of Environmental Studies!

Very exciting news has just arrived!!
I received an e-mail late this afternoon from Dr. Esther Enns, Dean of Arts, indicating that Dr. Dodds just received a fax from MPHEC stating:
“I am writing to inform you that the proposed Bachelor of Environmental Studies has successfully undergone a cursory review and is therefore approved…”
We'll take the cursory review and pop open our sustainable champagne! A huge thanks to the many individuals who helped to make this a reality!