Keywords

4.1 Introduction

Perhaps the biggest question that we face as teachers is how best to prepare our students to hit the ground running once they leave campus and begin their professional careers. With respect to sustainability issues, this means instilling in them not only a wide range of skills with which to begin collaboration with others in solving problems (quantitative and qualitative, local and global), but also providing a communicative starting point, a common dialect and concrete objectives using that dialect with which they can begin their work with professionals in other fields. The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs ) serve as an ideal starting point for conversation and action that inch us closer to sustainable global living. The SDGs provide a widely accepted framework of collective action, one that has been put to use by actors both in the public and private sector. It is therefore crucial that, regardless of major or field of study, university students have classroom experience that affords them a solid grasp of what the SDGs are, how they provide a framework for action, and where they point us as a civilization.

One problem, then, is that systems-thinking approaches (upon which the SDGs foundationally rest) and the SDGs themselves are rarely explicitly taught in the classroom. Ratified by the UN in 2015, the goals are only a few years old. Although they were rolled out to great fanfare within professional development circles, scant attention has been paid to the goals beyond that space, even within the academy. The societal shifts that sustainability research tends to put forth as necessary often fall squarely within the bounds of the politically or economically infeasible. For instance, the Green New Deal proposed by the progressive wing of the US Democratic Party, marries climate change action with social justice progress, a systems-thinking perspective that squares with the SDGs, yet it has been roundly criticized by conservatives for being wholly impractical, with even some centrist-leaning Democrats calling it purely “aspirational” (Axelrod 2019; King 2019). Over 3 years since their creation, the SDGs have yet to make their way into the classroom substantially, and a crucial opportunity for this generation of students goes by the wayside.

How to change this, then, especially given the growing number of budgetary shortfalls that befall many higher education institutions, especially those public universities that do not benefit from generous institutional endowments? The sustainability-focused faculty learning community (SFLC) model is one that has been effectively deployed for decades. The SFLC can be created without incurring prohibitive financial cost to the institution. This program leverages an already present interest in sustainability on the part of students and instructors; it expands the learning space to the community of stakeholders beyond the walls of the campus and the natural environment in which the university lies. The SFLC can be tailored to meet the needs and limitations of any higher education institution. In this chapter, I will describe the model and its history in the USA, how colleagues and I at my home campus of SUNY New Paltz created an SFLC and have seen substantive, increasing success with the program. The chapter will also outline the steps one might take in building an SFLC at one’s home campus even if there are challenges concerning limited time and resources. I hope to persuade readers that this is something concerned campus citizens can create on their campus. The SFLC value to the community far outweigh its costs and offer a straightforward blueprint with which to start the process of creating own version of the program at other university campuses.

4.2 A Brief History of the Sustainability-Focused Faculty Learning Community

The Faculty Learning Community (FLC) model has proven to be effective in promoting professional development in higher education. Defined loosely as a “community of practice” (Engin and Atkinson 2015), the FLC model addresses a number of management problems pervasive in higher education institutions. These problems include the compartmentalization of faculty within specific disciplines, lack of opportunity to openly network and share research with colleagues across departments and schools, and structural disincentives to even temporarily relieve the “expert” label burden in the pursuit of learning something entirely new. Faculty at all levels, particularly junior faculty and adjunct instructors, routinely report time constraints and work creep as they are continually asked to accept more administrative responsibilities while not seeing a commensurate rise in compensation. Add in the inevitable repetition of teaching a set repertoire of classes, and it is no surprise that faculty burnout and restlessness are common. All this can and often does lead to diminished morale and a sense of collective stagnation.

The FLC model, based on the social theory of learning, brings together interested faculty from different disciplines under the directive of a particular theme or subject matter and can help to address these issues. Four characteristics of professional development make the FLC model generally appropriate in a higher education context with faculty. The FLCs are collective, collaborative, contextualized in a meaningful way, and problem-based (Engin and Atkinson 2015).

Summarizing previous research on FLCs, Elgin and Atkinson expanded on these four characteristics noting that in faculty learning communities, like-minded participants (here, university faculty and staff) work towards a common goal (Eckert 2006). They develop over the course of the FLC activities a sense of collegiality that includes sharing ideas and advising one another as appropriate (Weller 2009, Wenger 1998). There is also a focus on real-world, timely issues (Eckert 2006, Wenger 1998). The FLC also finds efficacy in being problem-based, with participants collectively working towards concrete solutions (Elton 2009, Klenowski et al. 2006). Banasik and Dean (2016) have further observed that the FLCs that include non-tenure track faculty contribute to those members experiencing an increased sense of community and belonging at the institution as well as exposure to new pedagogy and teaching techniques. One might conclude that the very act of bringing faculty together to share teaching and research ideas under the aegis of investigating a subject of common interest has proven an effective way to promote campus community and professional growth.

It seems a logical step, then, for the FLC model to be used within a sustainability framework, and indeed, there is meaningful history of this being the case. In 1992, Tufts University introduced the Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute (TELI) program (Cortese 1992), a week-long environmentalism-oriented faculty training program, which ran for 5 years and saw a lasting impact at the school even after the program itself ended. Twelve years after the training program, Tufts had over 70 TELI-trained faculty members who were still actively engaged in environmental issues, and the school had grown to offer 21 different environmental degrees (Barlett and Rappaport 2009; Natkin and Kolbe 2016).

Building off the example set by TELI, Geoffrey Chase and Paul Rowland began the Ponderosa Project at Northern Arizona University in 1995 (Barlett and Eisen 2002). Taking cues from Tufts and keeping an eye on sustainability-infused curriculum development as the ultimate goal, they established a two-day program during which faculty would be trained in the fundamentals of sustainability on the first day, and also be offered time to reflect and work on a specific syllabus. Either a revision of an existing class or an entirely new course, during the second day of the workshop would be done. This, in turn, led to Peggy Barlett bringing the Ponderosa model to her institution, Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and in 2001, with the guidance of the Northern Arizona University leaders, she created the Piedmont Project, now the gold standard for this sort of sustainability faculty professional development program (Barlett and Eisen 2002, Eisen and Barlett 2006). Moreover, Barlett and Chase have partnered and team-taught workshops in conjunction with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) helping faculty and sustainability staff from institutions across the USA to design and promote similar programs at their home institutions. By 2012, hundreds of participants in these workshops, representing over 275 institutions had completed the training and brought the SFLC model back to their home campuses (Barlett and Chase 2012).

Given that different institutions have different needs and thus require specific tailoring of any program in order to best serve their faculty and students, many of the SFLCs born of the Barlett and Chase workshops vary in scope and duration, among other parameters. However, there are some common elements put forth as goals by the two pioneers (Barlett and Chase 2012):

  1. 1.

    Foster creativity.

  2. 2.

    Emphasize faculty expertise.

  3. 3.

    Build faculty community.

  4. 4.

    Encourage an interdisciplinary approach .

  5. 5.

    Welcome diverse pedagogical approaches.

  6. 6.

    Make connections.

  7. 7.

    Focus on learning outcomes.

Note should be taken that these goals are oriented around encouraging faculty, typically expected to be authorities in any professional setting, to momentarily let go of that encumbrance and once again position themselves as learners, beginners with experience. This taps into what one imagines as the fuel that drives any person to head for a career in teaching and academics in the first place, namely a persistent thirst for knowledge and understanding and the joy that comes with being in a position to satisfy that thirst. Good teachers were first good students, and creating the conditions for faculty to return, if only for a couple of days, to that state, is much of where the value of the experience lies. The SFLC design asks its participants to use the connections, community, and resources provided by the workshop to draw individualized conclusions regarding how best to develop their future class plans and syllabi to better align with current sustainability content.

The importance of this dynamic cannot be emphasized enough. Most faculty who begin to sense that class content is being dictated to them will likely, and rightfully, turn away, protective of their charge. To that end, the Piedmont/Ponderosa model focuses on providing sustainability material and simply creating the conditions for discovery and collegial sharing of techniques and approaches in order to inspire each workshop participant to choose, from this newly presented content, what might fit best in their classrooms. The personal connections made with other faculty who they may not have otherwise met and, in many cases, community partners who wish to engage students in practical projects beyond the walls of the university is a particularly eye-opening element. As such, participants across many of the now established SFLCs have reported the SFLC as being valuable and applicable to course revision.

4.3 The SUNY New Paltz SFLC: A Case Study

In June 2015, two New Paltz faculty members, one from the School of Business and another from the Department of Digital Media and Journalism, attended a week-long program in sustainability leadership at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont (UVM). The faculty did not have extensive backgrounds in sustainability studies. UVM’s Professional Certificate in Campus Sustainability Leadership (PCCSL) program trains higher education faculty and staff in the fundamentals of sustainability while showcasing the substantive progress that UVM has made as a campus. Such showcasing includes the overhauling of UVM’s energy system to leave a smaller carbon footprint, initiatives like a campus bicycle-sharing system to help ease transportation pressures, and the construction of platinum LEED-certified buildings, the cynosure of their campus infrastructure. The program also emphasizes UVM’s connection to the community and local institutions like Shelburne Farms, a school and estate outside of Burlington with a long-standing sustainability mission. The week serves as much tangible case study as an information-based learning experience for those coming from universities that have yet to take similar progressive steps.

Most impressive at UVM is that they have not only been successful in promoting sustainability in the curriculum, but that they have gone so far as to make sustainability coursework a general education requirement for all undergraduate students. This is largely due to the momentum created about sustainability content in the classroom. This momentum has been further fueled by the UVM Sustainability Faculty Fellows Program, their SFLC modeled after the Piedmont/Ponderosa initiatives. Spearheaded by two UVM faculty members who attended one of Barlett and Chase’s AASHE workshops in 2009 (Natkin and Kolbe 2016), the UVM program, as of 2015, boasted 103 trained faculty from 35 different academic disciplines, across the schools on campus and including ranks from Lecturer to full Professor. Over the life of the program, trained fellows produced 113 sustainability content-rich courses for the UVM’s student population of roughly 7500 students (Natkin and Kolbe 2016).

At New Paltz, a regional public university in upstate New York with a student body of approximately 7500, the two UVM-trained faculty members returned in the fall of 2015 determined to create a similar SFLC-style workshop at home. After presenting the idea to the University Sustainability Committee and receiving approval to develop a formal proposal to be presented to the administration, a sub-committee consisting of three faculty members (including the two who had gone to UVM and the campus Sustainability Coordinator) was formed.

The first order of business was to create the goals for the New Paltz program. The goals are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Create a community of faculty/staff who are committed to infusing interdisciplinary approaches to environmental sustainability into the curriculum.

  2. 2.

    Starting with the UN SDGs and a systems-thinking approach , enhance the understanding of environmental sustainability concepts among faculty and students, particularly those not trained in environmental fields.

  3. 3.

    Explore teaching and course design strategies that will engage students in sustainable development from a multidisciplinary approach .

  4. 4.

    Encourage and fund curricular development without content prescription from above.

Recall that in 2015, the UN released the updated Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) as the now 17 UN SDGs, and as we created the program at New Paltz, it made sense to use these SDGs as the conceptual foundation for the program’s training. The SDGs were preferred for their comprehensiveness and global application and their immediate relevance to the world beyond the university. In this context, one of the great assets of the SDGs is their breadth—almost any teacher can come to the SDGs fresh and find their work and field of study located somewhere within the 17 SDGs. This means that training such that an SFLC offers can be structured as widely inclusive from the start, and the training can take advantage of the many resources that the UN and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) have already published with respect to the SDGs. This provides a framework of action that is systems based from the start, and in the realm of curricular development, UNESCO’s document on learning objectives is particularly useful (Tang 2017).

We also chose to make explicit the founding ethos of the training, which is to avoid content prescription and not require participating faculty to teach any particular content or to teach using any specific pedagogical styles. We would ask for concrete curricular change, but structure the training to allow each participant to decide what to change and how to include the SDG content in their work. We set expectations for the faculty participants in the following way:

  • Attend four program workshops/breakfasts across the academic year, two each semester.

  • Participate in a two-day training institute during the winter session in January.

  • Redesign or develop new course material to integrate the concepts of sustainability.

  • Evaluate the redesigned course to gauge student attitudes and knowledge regarding sustainability.

  • Demonstrate enthusiasm for developing interdisciplinary partnerships in sustainability teaching and scholarship.

Our program, based on UVM’s adaptation of the Piedmont/Ponderosa model , consists of two workshops each semester (consecutive fall and spring), which sandwich the centerpiece of the program, a two-day January Institute during which the participants, or “sustainability faculty fellows,” receive the lion’s share of their training in sustainability content and resources. Faculty participants at New Paltz have had varying levels of experience with sustainability in general, so the two meetings in the fall introduce the fellows to one another and are geared towards laying out basic sustainability concepts. The two meetings in the spring reinforce the work done in January and prepare the fellows to present their revised syllabi at the end of the school year.

The January Institute is divided into one day of intensive learning led by a sustainability expert during which the cohort of program fellows, as well as community partners are invited to participate in the workshop agenda and a second day located off-campus. During the second day, fellows are given the opportunity to reflect on the previous day’s content and begin to think through what they want to do with their course revision or class development in adding sustainability content.

To help incentivize participation from already time- and energy-taxed faculty and staff, fellows receive a $250 stipend upon completion of the training and the submission of their revised syllabus. Fellows also have access to additional funding for new interdisciplinary team-taught classes to come out of the training with a sustainability focus. Offering financial compensation is a common element of SFLCs based on Piedmont/Ponderosa model though the amount offered to participants can differ quite a bit. The Piedmont workshop at Emory offers participants $1000, whereas Santa Clara University, where their Penstemon Project follows the Piedmont example, offers $500 to each member of each cohort (Barlett and Chase 2012). At New Paltz, given a strict budgetary climate and a decision on the part of the organizing sub-committee to place less emphasis on the financial compensation and more on the professional development opportunity, we set our stipend a bit lower than other programs have. Initially, we considered having no stipend at all. However, we ultimately decided that even a nominal amount of money provided a good-faith gesture to applicants that was likely to be worth the outlay.

This does touch on the question of why faculty would voluntarily take on additional training such as that put forward by an SFLC. The short answer for us is that there was a latent interest among faculty and staff on campus in becoming more active concerning sustainability and that interest exists as a great untapped reservoir of positive change and action. Many faculty members have a deep personal interest in sustainability, and once introduced to the SDGs were eager to dive deeply into that content. However, many were not sure how to bring that interest to their research or the classroom. That the program has steady interest and seen continual positive results speaks to the value of providing the opportunity for instructors to connect personal values with professional development . In other words, the monetary benefit helps, but was never seen as the primary appeal of the program. Had it been, surely the program and the others that had inspired it would have failed long ago.

With the initial proposal of 2 years of funding for up to 15 faculty and staff participants per cohort per yearly, the sub-committee presented an official proposal to the Provost’s Office, who after a round of minor revisions approved the project, including funding for fellow stipend remuneration and funding for course development. In the end, the New Paltz SFLC is an endeavor supported by the Office of Sustainability, the Sustainability Committee, and the Office of the Provost.

Gaining the Provost’s support was crucial not only for the budgetary help, but also for the imprimatur of the administration in the eyes of those who would become fellows. Some of the hesitance to branch out individually and move beyond silos for faculty seems born of a feeling that to do so sees little professional reward. When asked about barriers to progress in developing sustainability-related coursework and working beyond departmental needs, fellows have mentioned “institutional inertia/resistance,” “bureaucracy,” and “no institutional framework or support for community collaboration at the university level.” To have the stamp of approval from the Provost announced to the faculty at New Paltz that not only was it safe to spend time branching out and learning something completely new but that it was officially encouraged. This opened the doors for many to apply to the program and ultimately receive the training.

After a successful 2 years of the program at New Paltz, the Provost has reinstated funding for a third year, including supplemental funding for the development of interdisciplinary team-taught classes.

4.4 Assessment of the Program and Results

As the January Institute has served as the focal point of the training, we surveyed fellows after each retreat in order to assess programming and ultimate pedagogical and material value for the participants. The results show positive responses from the majority of the fellows primarily along the vectors of increased knowledge of sustainability concepts, interpersonal connection with other faculty and staff, and introductions to potential community partners (Table 4.1). Respondents were asked to reply to each statement with a value of 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree.

Table 4.1 Participants’ response to the SFLC
Full size table

Additionally, the survey solicited comments from the fellows asking both what they found most valuable about the training and what they thought might be improved with the next iteration of the program. Some representative comments regarding the positive value of the retreat are shown in Box 4.1.

Box 4.1: Respondents Assessment on the Value of the Training and What Could Be Improved

“An excellent experience that transformed how I’ll motivate my students in content-rich information design courses.”

“Thank you for hosting this! It was great to connect more with the academic faculty because so many times we do not have the opportunity to share what’s going on outside of the classroom!”

“…I was able to establish internal sustainability-based collaborations, which I never had the occasion to initiate in over two years at New Paltz. Being in the same room with the right people fueled discussions which will likely lead to joint work on sustainability problems. …It raised my spirits and allowed me to redirect my frustrations.”

“I enjoyed learning more about community partners and about how to integrate sustainability into my courses.”

“I liked how there was a larger number of people from the community and other institutions than I expected.”

“The opportunity to share ideas and hear what other faculty are thinking about doing with respect to integrating sustainability content in their classes.”

“The interaction with my colleagues from all over campus. I learned a lot beyond the intent of the workshop.”

“Was very inspiring and increased my enthusiasm for teaching economics. In the context of the SDGs, economics takes on more meaning.”

“I loved hearing the stories of the community members as well as the professors who are trying to bring the issues of sustainability into their classrooms.”

“This is a wonderful initiative. I hope it continues to grow with leaps and bounds.”

“I’m honored to be part of a campus that values sustainability to such a high degree and have been so impressed with the work that the Sustainability Office is doing.”

Common themes to emerge from these comments are that the program and the two-day January retreat, in particular, succeed in boosting faculty morale. This comes out through assembling faculty bonded by a common interest in sustainability and by providing the learning context within which to share ideas, pedagogy, and resources. Access to community partners with whom student projects and events can be designed and used in teaching and learning is another cited positive, as it presented opportunities for practical application of the SDGs and sustainability principles in general. These results correspond with those found by Peggy Bartlett and Ann Rappaport in their comprehensive assessment of the TELI and Piedmont projects where they found both programs changed participants’ teaching and knowledge of environmental and sustainability issues substantially (Barlett and Rappaport 2009). Critical survey comments tended to focus on the availability of resources and support beyond the two-day retreat and logistical concerns regarding the organization of the two days. Further responses from the participants are presented below.

“Introductions to the community people were rushed, and it would have been good to have more time to hear from everyone. It would have helped make better connections.”

“The two days were overloaded with content … sometimes a bit too much time sitting. It would be refreshing to break out into “think-pair-share” small groups with specific assignments for discussion or something specifically directed.’

‘Since a lot of the ideas presented were new to me, I needed more time to comprehend them.”

“There was a bit too much information given a bit too quickly.”

“I would have preferred getting information sooner (prior to the morning of) so I had more time to prepare…”

These comments have helped us think about scheduling and small programmatic changes with each new iteration of the program. The observations further assist us on how to strike the right balance between a broader fundamental approach for those new to sustainability and more targeted delivery of resources for those already well-versed in sustainability issues. During 2017–2018, our second year, the cohort included some faculty members who already work steadily in sustainability, and their response to the training was more muted, that while the opportunity to network with others still led to a positive overall experience, the information and resources provided felt too basic for their needs. In the other years’ cohorts, the training seemed to be closer to the aggregate sustainability experience level of the fellows.

Finally, we asked participants about future intentions having come through the January Institute training and received many positive responses indicating concrete plans. The responses are shown in Box 4.2. We saw enthusiasm and ambition for changes in the classroom and in research agendas given the SDGs as a guiding framework.

Box 4.2: Required Future Intentions After Experiencing the January Institute Training

“…I plan to push my department to introduce a concentration in sustainability for elementary ed majors.”

“I would love to travel to some more sustainability training that has specific links with psychology and education.”

“In one of my modified classes, I plan to ask students to work in small groups to take action on a local sustainability issue. My intention is to have them report on their success or hand over the project to a group in the subsequent semester. I think this could be a really good study about what teachers do to help students see that their actions make a difference.”

“I would like to investigate the PFOA/S water problem in [neighboring] Hoosick Falls and Newburgh.”

“If we can help my students identify a local business/organization that has a product or service for sustainability, and could potentially be marketed overseas, it’ll be great help for my MBA class project.”

“I am arranging a meeting with the local watershed alliances to initiate new projects.”

“Work on aspects of communicating climate change information.”

“Continue to pursue sustainable natural materials for industrial application.”

“…working on community currencies and how systems can generate positive feedback loops on income generation.”

Regarding curriculum results from the two completed years of our SFLC, the program has produced 27 revised or newly developed courses (as verified by fellows submitting syllabi to a common SFLC online repository). The submitted syllabi come from across the university’s schools (LA&S, Engineering, Education, Fine Arts) and disciplines (including Mathematics, Digital Media and Journalism, Geography, Economics). Additionally, six SFLC fellows have been funded to develop entirely new sustainability-infused courses, with the first team-taught class to come out of the program being offered to students during the fall of 2018. An additional 13 revised or new sustainability-infused courses as well as proposals for developing new interdisciplinary team-taught courses were expected in the next cohort.

4.5 Proposing and Establishing an SFLC at Your Institution

Given our experience at New Paltz in developing the proposal for a Piedmont/Ponderosa-style SFLC on our campus, some thoughts on how to approach developing a similar program at your home institution including suggestions as to how to position a proposal when speaking with potential funding sources or administrative heads can be offered.

First, it is worthwhile to at least informally assess the local conditions to see if they are conducive to being receptive to this sort of program. Meaning, it is important to get a sense that there is some of the aforementioned latent interest, from faculty and administration, in increasing sustainability content in the classroom. The SDGs framework remains key to such endeavors. In the majority of circumstances, you will be able to find such interest simply by talking with faculty or, as we did in our case, speaking with our Sustainability Coordinator who already had a good sense of the campus dynamics and temperature. This is an important step because you will likely have to find a group of committed faculty or staff facilitators who are willing to do the legwork to get the program off the ground, both in the proposal stage and the active programming stage. For our facilitators, this has meant service in addition to our normal workloads as faculty and sustainability staff, so it is good to know going in that such will be required and that program leaders will have to take that into account given their other responsibilities.

Once you have a group ready to develop a proposal, and depending on whose approval you seek, you need to tailor your argument accordingly. Given that New Paltz does not have the financial resources that many private institutions have (e.g., a large private endowment, high student tuition to help fill the coffers), we knew that for an SFLC to be approved we would have to demonstrate substantive returned value for a relatively low capital investment as well as programmatic relevance to the entire university, not simply a select campus group. To that end, having the SDGs to point to as the framework for the training was of great help because, again, the UN goals are comprehensive by design and allow any faculty member/potential SLFC participant to locate themselves somewhere within their parameters. To reiterate this key point: a strong rationale for centering the SDGs within an SFLC is that by their very design the SDGs invite inclusion in action and projects already underway in both private and public sectors, and they serve as a very accessible communicative starting point, one that promotes ipso facto a systems-thinking approach and easy cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas and collaboration. That the SDGs have been accepted globally as universal objectives connects even those new to sustainability with much larger global context providing real-world immediacy for faculty and, ultimately, for their students.

Related to this universality point, we also argued the inevitability of higher education moving towards sustainability-related pedagogy if only because the world is quickly approaching a tipping point with climate change (Masson-Delmotte et al. 2018; Watts 2018; Wu 2018) and societal systems across the board will have to be reconsidered in the context of a warming planet. Though the academy is slow to embrace institutional change, the issue will be forced by a world that is evolving faster than the standard pace of academic adaptation. A concurrent shift in curricula that will allow schools to deliver the practical, interdisciplinary skills that students will need as they join a global community faced with previously unaddressed culturally embedded problems is unavoidable. Thus, ways to begin to push that sort of curricular change will need to be found, and efforts like these, put forth and tried. The time to foster creative change is now, in other words, and additionally, the pressure will most certainly come from the bottom up.

Student demand for courses and majors that focus on sustainability topics is rising, and again, given the SDGs as a starting-point framework, this includes not only environmental and ecological disciplines, but also related sustainable economic, political, and social justice areas. Generational research on the attitudes of Millennials (ages 22 to 37) and Generation Z (under the age of 27) shows an increasing belief in government and public policy to solve problems, higher levels of belief in man-made climate change than previous generations, and an increasing acceptance and expectation of diversity, inclusion, and social equity as societal norms (Parker, Graf, and Igielnik 2019). These attitudes will translate into prospective students looking for schools that offer curricula that align with that expectation and understanding. Institutions that want to continue to attract the best and brightest will do well to develop corresponding coursework if it is not already in place.

The potential penalty for not getting ahead of that curve will be to see applications and enrollments drop. The benefit of actively developing the corresponding course work, however, is the potential to position the institution as a regional sustainability leader, or in coarser terms, to boost the brand of the school. Some universities have already taken the lead in this respect, partnering with AASHE to showcase their respective sustainability-focused faculty training programs as AASHE Centers for Sustainability Across the Curriculum (CSAC) . Achieving a reputation as a school that has ample offerings in sustainability has the potential to be a key marketing point for any higher education institution, the long-term recruitment value of which would far outweigh the nominal short-term capital investment in an SFLC program.

Tied to student demand is satisfying the demand on the part of the faculty to introduce sustainability in their teaching. We found that especially junior faculty expressed interest in the training offered by the SFLC, which again, is not surprising given the research expressing the preferences of Millennials as noted above. This is not to discount or exclude senior faculty but more to reiterate the larger point that in creating an SFLC one creates the conditions for faculty with a personal interest in sustainability and the SDGs to bring that interest to their professional work and collaboration in an institution-supported context. What we have discovered, as also confirmed by Barlett and Rappaport, is that much of what seems to be missing from business as usual in the academy is an opportunity for interdisciplinary conversation, events that capitalize on the wealth of expertise and experience of any school’s greatest human resource, its teachers. In the context of the SDGs and sustainability in general, the coming together of the experts on campus has a multiplier effect of shared knowledge, affirmation of values, and genuine collegiality and cross-fertilization of ideas with a deeper connection to the practices going on globally.

Finally, we presented the results as reported by other institutions, beginning with the UVM SFF program (since this was the one we most directly modeled our program on), but we also pointed to the history of success nationally as outlined above. Again, since we needed to demonstrate a likely high return on investment, having so many success stories to point to was invaluable in validating our proposal. To this end, we owe much to Cortese, Barlett, Chase, et al., our pioneer predecessors, in leading the way and showing that simply creating the conditions for faculty to move confidently in a particular direction can have a hugely positive and lasting impact on an institution, even if the program that fostered the sustainability or environmental learning itself eventually disappears (Barlett and Rappaport 2009).

4.6 Conclusion

The future of the sustainability-based faculty learning community is one that will hopefully see continued growth in higher education on campuses globally. As discussed in this chapter, in 2017, AASHE partnered with a group of universities in the USA (with now also a center in Hong Kong) to serve as centers for sustainability-based learning for college instructors. At these centers, faculty from neighboring schools can receive training to bring back to their institutions, furthering progress in delivering sustainability content to university classrooms.

Moving forward, there is call for further research into a standardized means of assessing SFLCs as they continue to proliferate in higher education (Natkin and Kolbe 2016). With more institutions creating similar programs, a common means of evaluating success would be greatly valuable, and as of this writing, AASHE and some of their CSAC leaders are gathering information from institutions in an effort to understand commonalities across programs.

However, perhaps Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, one of the AASHE centers, reflects the next stage of advancement where they have no discrete major or program in sustainability but instead have reached a level where sustainability is so infused throughout the school’s curriculum that there is no need for a separate academic course identifier or study requirement—sustainability is simply considered to be ingrained in all fields of undergraduate study. A wonderful example to help us see what is achievable with strong leadership, vision, and a bit of persistence, an aspirational goal for all of us.

The sign of a good idea is that it grows legs, and the SFLC model has been up and running for some time now. I encourage you to review the literature for additional data and results, but the bottom line is that the reason that you’ll see such consistently positive reports from schools that have adopted the program is that it’s simply a good idea for which, again, the credit must go to the pioneers who first gave it a shot. It is now vetted, time-tested, and up to you to bring the idea to your campus. After all, sustainability requires not only research, but the application of that research towards progress, concrete action. All it takes is for a few people to step up and decide to do it. As former chess world champion and political activist Garry Kasparov likes to say, “If not you, then who?”