Building a Green Curriculum

When administrators and officials discuss sustainability on campus, the conversation is often directed to the biggest projects with the greatest potential to effect real change: buildings. It's not uncommon to hear of the newest and greenest building set to be designed at any given university.

Such ambition can even reach the heights of Wake Tech, which hopes to create an all-LEED campus. However, this ambition all too frequently falls short, and campuses don't go green enough. Other efforts, such as green landscaping, are left to pick up the slack.

While this effort to increase campus sustainability continues, a recent survey indicates that the green movement has been falling out of favour in curriculum. The result has been a push to revive the inclusion of sustainability, across all curricula. More and more, simple awareness measures are being tied into the course material, from using world oil consumption in a polynomial differentiation question, to using an exhibit on local food practices for teaching methodology in sociology.

This effort aligns with the green movement itself, utilising more of a grassroots approach and relying on individuals to make a difference. And so the opportunity and the tools are there for instructors to do their part in promoting a green campus. The buildings, we hope, will follow.