Archive for the ‘higher education’ Category
| Newer Entries »In this week’s issue of Nature: The urgent need for more interdisciplinary, solutions-driven university research
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
The president of the University of Alberta, Indira Samarasekera, argues in the current issue of Nature (subscription required) that we need to push university research towards more-interdisciplinary, solutions-focused work that helps the world deal with major financial, social, and environmental issues. She makes the point that traditional, pure research is also needed but that we now have to do both well.
Although she doesn’t mention teaching, I’d argue that this kind of interdisciplinary transformation, focusing on major contemporary problems and the balancing of pure and applied inquiry, also needs to happen on the curricular side of campus.
Here are a few of her thoughts…
Posted in higher education | No Comments »
Introducing film to scientific meetings
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Here’s a great way to link the humanities and the natural sciences: Showcase film festivals at annual scientific research meetings. That’s what the Southeastern Estuarine Research Society is proposing at their upcoming Benthic Ecology meeting at UNC-Wilmington.
This is not just a film showing. It’s a call for original works by filmmakers, from students to professionals, alongside the usual call for papers and posters. That’s cool.
The program announcement…
Posted in environmental literacy, higher education, nature and culture | No Comments »
This week’s good ideas in campus sustainability: 11/9/09
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Let’s take a look at five innovative and exciting ideas from Stanford University, City College of New York, Western Michigan University, UC-Davis, and the University of Arizona…
Posted in campus sustainability, environmental literacy, environmental science, higher education, sustainability, sustainable development, technology, transportation, urban | 1 Comment »
This week’s good ideas in campus sustainability: 11/2/09
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
There’s a lot happening this week in the world of campus sustainability, including several campuses rolling out green buildings, solar electricity installations, and renewable energy purchases.
Three initiatives stand out as innovative:
(1) Franklin Pierce University announces new M.B.A. in Energy & Sustainability Studies
Here’s another example of a school re-framing traditional degree programs like the MBA.
Excerpts:
Franklin Pierce’s program differentiates itself from other “Green M.B.A.” offerings in that it focuses on energy issues and resource management. Resources such as food, water, energy and raw materials are examined in conjunction with issues of conservation and exploitation and their effect on business enterprises and communities. Topics include the examination of traditional non-renewable energy sources, like oil, coal and nuclear, as well as renewable sources, like solar, wind and geothermal. Students are exposed to worldwide markets for energy and the need for conservation, further exploitation and improved technology of all energy resources.
Dr. Michael Mooiman, an Assistant Professor in the M.B.A. program, said, “We believe that in the 21st Century organizations will have two CEOs – a Chief Executive Officer and a Chief Energy Officer. The M.B.A. in Energy & Sustainability Studies provides graduates the skills, knowledge and credentials necessary to effectively lead in either position.”
This one is interesting for showing how universities can collaborate with surrounding regions to make innovations happen more quickly.
Excerpts:
The Illinois Smart Grid Collaboration is a statewide public-private partnership led by IIT and UIUC to speed the adoption of the Smart Grid in Illinois and nationally. Key private and municipal partnerships include Commonwealth Edison, Ameren, the City of Chicago, the Village of Oak Park, the Galvin Electricity Initiative and more than 50 companies.
The Collaboration applied as a Smart Grid Regional Demonstration project, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, seeking $60 million (50% match) from the US Department of Energy (DoE) for the project.
The Collaboration is nationally significant in that it is working to speed the effective adoption of the Smart Grid through a unique community, consumer, and market-based approach. With engagement at each of these levels, this project provides a format to ensure the expected benefits of SmartGrid adoption are widely adopted.
(3) Department of Energy Awards $338 Million to Accelerate Domestic Geothermal Energy
This example shows the kinds of impacts possible with more serious federal investment in alternative energy technologies. It’s not just that all of these schools will lead by example of having a better heating and cooling system; the effect gets multiplied because these institutions can now use geothermal as learning tools for students, faculty, and staff. Not to mention the green jobs it produces.
Excerpts:
U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced up to $338 million in Recovery Act funding for the exploration and development of new geothermal fields and research into advanced geothermal technologies. These grants will support 123 projects in 39 states, with recipients including private industry, academic institutions, tribal entities, local governments, and DOE’s National Laboratories. The grants will be matched more than one-for-one with an additional $353 million in private and non-Federal cost-share funds.
“The United States is blessed with vast geothermal energy resources, which hold enormous potential to heat our homes and power our economy,” said Secretary Chu. “These investments in America’s technological innovation will allow us to capture more of this clean, carbon free energy at a lower cost than ever before. We will create thousands of jobs, boost our economy and help to jumpstart the geothermal industry across the United States.”
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For more information:
Tags: AASHE
Posted in campus sustainability, higher education | No Comments »
Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 1: Environmental Literacy
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Prerequisite post: Why don’t people engage climate change? Overview
When awareness of or engagement in an issue like climate change is low, we often assume education will help. And it can, but only to a point, as we will see in this and other posts.
With respect to climate change, there are at least four challenges with environmental literacy:
Challenge 1: People don’t know enough about how human and environmental systems work and interact.
This report by the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation presents ten years of research describing the state of environmental literacy in America.
As you might expect, it’s filled with stories of some basic facts that people get wrong, such as
- 45 million Americans think that the oceans are our source of fresh water (it’s not –rivers, rainfall, reservoirs, and aquifers are)
- 120 million Americans think that spray cans are still a source of ozone-damaging CFCs (these were phased out with the 1989 Montreal Protocol; most propellants nowadays include a variety of gases—interestingly, for food these gases include CO2 (which contributes to warming) and N2O (which contributes to both warming and ozone destruction)).
- 120 million Americans think that disposable diapers are the #1 landfill problem (paper is actually).
- 130 million Americans think hydropower is America’s top energy supply (it’s coal).
Posted in climate change science, environmental literacy, higher education, nature and culture | 7 Comments »
Why don’t people engage climate change? Overview
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Last week, Pew published a new poll suggesting a declining number of Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence of climate warming and that warming is a serious problem.
In the next several posts, I’m going to address the question of why it appears that people don’t seem to engage climate change. This work is based on research for a talk I gave a few days ago.
Helping people understand and become active in dealing with climate change is challenging, but it’s also an incredibly fascinating interdisciplinary enterprise. You’ll see that disciplines across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities are needed for this conversation.
And you’ll see some things that are counterintuitive and may surprise you.
I’m going to consider five major problems contributing to this challenge, shown in order of what I consider to be increasing difficulty to deal with:
Posted in behavior, climate change science, climate skeptics deniers and contrarians, environmental literacy, higher education, nature and culture, policy | 5 Comments »
This week’s good ideas in campus sustainability: 10/26/09
Monday, October 26th, 2009
This is the first post of a new feature at globalchangeblog.com. The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) publishes a weekly bulletin listing many of the things that campuses across the country (and Canada) are doing to become more sustainable.
Each week, I will pull a few of the best examples of interesting projects and weave them into a broader discussion about sustainability.
This week’s featured projects:
(1) Aspen Institute Beyond Gray Pinstripes Green MBA Ranking
- As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s time for higher education to start thinking about what it means to train people to be successful in a world that is ecologically unsustainable and socially unjust. If we expect the world to change, part of what we need to do is to start producing leaders who can help drive that change. This project ranks business schools according to how well they are achieving these goals.
In the words of the Aspen Institute, “While many MBA rankings exist, only one looks beyond reputation and test scores to measure something much more important: how well schools are preparing their students for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business.”
(2) University of Missouri, Columbia begins peer-to-peer sustainability outreach program.
- It’s one thing for colleges to get committed to sustainability, but these kinds of commitments reach a whole new level once students buy in and take some ownership in the process, turning what is often a top-down process into a bottom-up community driven effort.
(3) Antioch New England reduces energy by 19% since 2007
- 657 schools have signed the President’s Climate Commitment, an effort to move campuses towards carbon neutrality. As most of us who are working on these projects knows, it’s hard to turn the corner and get our institutions on an emission reduction path. It’s impressive when schools are already making significant, meaningful reductions.
(4) U Illinois to Offer Grad Option in Energy & Sustainability Engineering
and College of the Desert to Train Students for Solar Farms
- Environmental Studies students are excited about green jobs. Efforts by universities to develop innovative ways of training students for the future are exciting.
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For more information:
Posted in behavior, campus sustainability, higher education, sustainability | 1 Comment »
“The University’s Crisis of Purpose”
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Harvard University President, Drew Gilpin Faust, argues in the NY Times that higher education, in order to deal with global challenges like climate warming, needs to return to its liberal arts principles rather than producing countless numbers of business majors.
Some excerpts:
The world economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama will change the future of higher education. Even as universities, both public and private, face unanticipated financial constraints, the president has called on them to assist in solving problems from health care delivery to climate change to economic recovery….
As the world indulged in a bubble of false prosperity and excessive materialism, should universities — in their research, teaching and writing — have made greater efforts to expose the patterns of risk and denial? Should universities have presented a firmer counterweight to economic irresponsibility? Have universities become too captive to the immediate and worldly purposes they serve? Has the market model become the fundamental and defining identity of higher education?
As a nation, we need to ask more than this from our universities. Higher learning can offer individuals and societies a depth and breadth of vision absent from the inevitably myopic present. Human beings need meaning, understanding and perspective as well as jobs. The question should not be whether we can afford to believe in such purposes in these times, but whether we can afford not to.
Others have argued similarly in the Times recently (Is it Time to Retrain B-Schools? and End the University as We Know It.)
Are these isolated rumblings, or is there a more fundamental problem, first identified by Wendell Berry and David Orr years ago, that the way we train students and structure higher education contributes to the major environmental and social problems we now face?
What does it mean to train students to be successful in a world that is ecologically unsustainable and socially unjust?
Tags: Harvard, higher education
Posted in environmental literacy, higher education, sustainability | 5 Comments »
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