Sustainable Curriculums

Elizabeth Redden reports on some of the AASHE conference for Inside Higher Ed:

Here at the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education conference, which concluded Tuesday, plenty of sessions focused on the operations side of things — energy savings, transportation demand management, and commercial composting. But also in town to give talks were a significant number of faculty members, from a wide range of disciplines, interested in leading from the classroom lectern.

“When you go back to your colleges and the math faculty say ‘I can’t do sustainability in the classroom,’ you can say, ‘No, no, I know someone who does it,’ ” said Thomas Pfaff, of Ithaca College.

Pfaff does it. As outlined on his Web site, his classes use real-world data, such as data on world grain production or atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, as a starting point for standard calculus problems. “None of this in my mind requires changing the calculus content,” said Pfaff, who said that in solving the problems students find opportunities for reflection.

“They’re not simply being told there is a problem, and I’m not telling them there is a problem…. I just give them the data and you tell me what’s going on,” said Pfaff.