Sustainability for Writing Teachers
(For teachers of other disciplines, see UCSB's Academic Senate Workgroup and AASHE)
We invite all teachers to integrate sustainability principles and projects within writing courses, at all levels. Both freshmen conposition courses and upper-division professional writing courses can have reading, research, writing, and oral components focused on sustainability. See what we have done at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB):
Most experts, and UCSB, follow the definition provided by the Brundtland Report (Our Common Future, 1987) for the United Nations: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
In 2002, the World Summit on Sustainable Devleopment Johannesburg, South Africa refined "sustainability" to go beyond environmental wellbeing. "Sustainability" addresses three areas:
- Economy
- Environment
- Equity
Business knows these goals as "The Triple Bottom Line" (or wellbeing in profit, planet, people).
Sustainability requires an interdisciplinary approach; our discipline is also interdisciplinary, and we generally have more flexibility in determining course readings and written research projects. We are well-suited for this!
One composition scholar, Derek Owens, asserts that "composition studies...needs to recognize...that sustainability is not only equal in importance to race, class, and gender but also entails many of the concerns associated with those rubrics."
Sustainability is increasingly part of most college/universities' mission; by teaching these principles, we expand our courses. We link with larger campus projects and strategies--and even global concerns. This is good for our students, and for us.
Sustainability should be everyone's business--not just for the United Nations, or some progressive businesses and scientists. As David Orrs says, universities "still educate the young for the most part as if there were no planetary emergency." (Change, 1995).
What are some sources for teachers?
As part of the TGIF grant, Dr. LeeAnne Kryder put together a workshop for UCSB Writing teachers interested in including sustainability as a research and writing topic. The following links came from that workshop: