Environmental Education in University Management: Contributions to Sustainability Construction at The University of São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

The University of São Paulo/Brazil created in 2012 the Superintendence of Environmental Management (SGA-USP) aimed at linking existing actions and the construction of sustainability at the University. Faced with this challenge, the SGA invested efforts in the Project “environmental education of USP’s technical and administrative staff”, developed in order to provide insights that could allow the university’s employees to expand their vision, perception and analysis of their current status and entertain possibilities of socio-environmental intervention on their work and interaction spaces and thereby internalize sustainability in university management. The methodological framework of participatory-action-research in environmental education(EE) was adopted in the development of this initiative, with what’s called the capillarity architecture system, through educating collectives called “PAP”, level 1 to 4. The first project cycle was developed from March 2013 to October 2015 and involved about 2500 employees of all campuses of USP. The aim of this work is to present general results of this project as well as to discuss its challenges and potential in the training of civil servants focused on social-environmental sustainability. Those involved in the process include: 22 PAP1, who formed the project’s managing group; 92 PAP2 who offered 31 courses to PAPs3; 533 PAP3 that promoted 127 interventions for 1853 PAP4 in different levels of content and workload (8–130 h of classroom training and monitored practice). This process brings contributions to the University environmental management, especially in community outreach; providing differentiated learning because of the requirement of practical interventions by all participants. It is expected that participation in this first cycle of environmental education leads to the effective participation of those employees in the university’s environmental policies, which are under construction under SGA’s leadership.