Sustainability: Opportunities for teaching old concepts via new problems

Abstract

The theoretical and methodological foundations of the sciences and technologies are essential to the removal of barriers to achieving sustainable systems. The teachings of these concepts still lie in traditional academic disciplines such as engineering, science, and mathematics. This structure can often manifest significant barriers to progress in tackling challenging sustainability issues due to an absence of a multi-faceted, interdisciplinary, systems approach. This work will explore approaches for using current sustainability issues and problems to introduce both systems thinking and traditional discipline specific learning objectives to the classroom. Specific examples will be illustrated for a diverse set of courses and curriculum. Assessment shows an improved rate of achieving teaching outcomes compared to traditional curricular techniques.