A wide lens on sustainability

New course challenges students to explore diversity of issues

By Veronica Hoskins

A new undergraduate course is exploring sustainability from a wide range of perspectives, challenging students to see how its issues are linked across disciplines.

UNIV 207: Exploring Sustainability became available to all undergraduate students in January as a seminar-based course and is proving that issues of sustainability can have very different meanings to scientists, politicians or accountants.

Taught by EVDS professor Brian Sinclair and William Tilleman, an environmental lawyer, the course encourages students to build their own positions on all aspects of sustainability—environmental, economic, social, cultural and political.

“The notion of sustainability needs to touch every student,” says Sinclair. “We want a business student to be able to look at sustainability through the eyes of a social worker or environmental scientist. The converse is equally vital. We want students to respect and listen to other opinions, explore them, evaluate them and in the process, develop and refine their own positions.”

Classes often feature three to four prominent speakers from a range of areas including industry, government, professional and public organizations, including leaders from the United Way, Nexen, imagineCalgary, the City of Calgary, Calgary Economic Development and the Calgary Foundation.

“Instead of being lectured to, students have the unique opportunity to be exposed to, and immersed in, a diversity of sustainability issues,” says Rachelle Haddock, a teaching assistant and master of environmental design (environmental science) student.

“It’s everything from how sustainability is interwoven with human rights, to sustainability in the built and natural environment, to personal sustainability.”

Brent Kostler is a second-year Bachelor of Commerce student and has learned that sustainability is centred on change.

“Small improvements in lifestyle can make our world a more sustainable place, he says. “The most important thing I’ve learned is that changing attitudes is the essential first step in effecting change and creating a more sustainable world.”

The class is made up of students studying a range of disciplines including business, political science, environmental science, communication studies, development studies, religious studies and more, and from every year of study.

Tilleman, a U of C Board of Governors member, and Sinclair spearheaded the initiative to have the University of Calgary sign the Talloires Declaration, a commitment of postsecondary institutions to environmental responsibility. The two also serve on the U of C’s Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability Committee of the Board of Governors.