The Role of University Centers in Environmental and Sustainability Education in Envisioning Futures

Abstract

This paper considers the role that university centers in environmental and sustainability education might play in envisioning futures for the field—as well as for tomorrow’s campus. The paper attempts to move the conversation of “the future” beyond a general or rhetorical sense and instead toward how university centers might participate in the collective, institutional, intergenerational, and social processes necessary to imagine, design, and actualize alternative, sustainable futures. This working understanding of “the future” comes from within traditional sustainability discourse on “present and future generations,” such as intergenerational education and intergenerational justice—as well as discourse further afield, such as speculative movements within the fields of design and architecture. University research centers in environmental and sustainability education are particularly suited to the task of envisioning socio-ecological futures, as they have been successful in promoting the mainstreaming of sustainability in home institutions, in academe, and in the larger culture and society. Centers are able to develop programs for and with students, connect the university to other communities, work with government, involve industry, and encourage scholars to explore intergenerational learning and transformative leadership for sustainability. Centers are a platform for interdisciplinary knowledge creation and feed sustainability ideas into universities and other societal institutions that they are not able to produce on their own. Centers, then, can be a place to envision futures for environmental and sustainability education, for tomorrow’s campus, and for Earth.