Teaching green

Professor Tarah Wright (right) with students Leslie Saunders, Dale Prest and Anita Nipen.(Bruce Bottomley Photo)

Imagine not just one professor at the front of the class, but three. Give them an issue to discuss and watch them thrash it out.

Classrooms are about to get a lot noisier at Dalhousie with the introduction of a new academic program, Environment, Sustainability and Society, offered through the College of Sustainability.

“In a first-year class, you may have three professors at the front of the class arguing, say an economist, a biologist and a political scientist all coming at issues from their different positions and different ways of dealing with problems,” says Jared Kolb, project and research coordinator with the College of Sustainability. “It should be pretty electrifying for students.”

Students are being recruited for the new undergraduate program, which launches in September. Like their professors, they’ll come from a myriad of  backgrounds and interests— the history major with the future engineer and computer scientist—and share a common passion for the sustaining the planet. 

The way it works is that students will take classes in Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS), a four-year undergraduate program, as half of a double major or combined honors.

They’ll combine their ESS studies with a second academic area drawn from any number of programs. Depending on their specialty, students will work towards a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Management, Bachelor of Community Design, Bachelor of Computer Science or Bachelor of Informatics. The idea is to bring students from different disciplines together to work on solving common problems together and to appreciate each other’s perspectives. 

Classes in ESS will emphasize teamwork and problem-based learning. After four years, students can expect to graduate as critical thinkers, communicators, researchers and effective team members. They’ll be leaders who’ll approach all they do with a an understanding of sustainability, no matter what their area of expertise.

The creation of the College of Sustainability coincides with a whole new energy on campus. The university has recently opened an Office of Sustainability with full-time director Rochelle Owen and Dalhousie Student Union has established SustainDal. The university’s master campus plan, now in development, is being designed with sustainability as a primary concern.

From now through to April, Dalhousie is engaged in CBC’s One Million Acts of Green challenge. The idea is to get students, staff, faculty and alumni thinking about what they can do for our environment in their own lives, from packing their groceries in reusable cloth bags to using paper on both sides.

“Universities are supposed to be responsive. We should be compelled to work on these issues and education is the way to go,” says Tarah Wright, interim associate director (undergraduate) with the College of Sustainability, “I commend Dalhousie for stepping up to the plate and saying, ‘We’re going to be leaders at this.”