If you are interested in Teaching for Sustainability, this blog post is for you. Last week I had the honor to go as a student representative to a workshop which discussed the critical question: what is the future sustainable university look like, and how do we reach it? What is the role of the university, and what is the role of the students? After an intense and inspiring day of workshopping, students and teachers alike wrote an to the headmasters of the universities in Sweden which declared what change we want to see in order for the universities to show their devotion to the sustainability goals and how to teach for the sustainable future.
Last Tuesday I was lucky to (on a late call) be invited to a workshop on the future of sustainability teaching at the university, hosted by the Lärosätenas klimatnätverk. This network is a project group, led by a taskforce at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sveriges lantbruksuniversitetet, SLU). Being an engaged student representative on the matter at hand, I quickly made the decision to join the workshop.
Who am I? I am a last year student at the Environmental Engineering program at LTH, and I have been engaged as a student representative in our study council for the last three years. Last year I also worked part time at the Centre for Engineering Education at LTH with a focus project on the sustainability education at LTH. If you are more interested you can read a post about my research here. With this background and interested in the topic I was quick to jump on a night train to Örebro to participate in the workshop.
The purpose of the workshop was to learn about the student’s perspective on the question of the sustainability teaching at the universities. An invitation had been sent to all the student unions in Sweden and a handful were represented, with Umeå being the furthest north, and me from Lund the furthest south. In west we had Gothenburg and in east we had Stockholm. So although not student Union was able to participate, we had student coming in from all corners of the land.
The day started with a wonderful check in exercise led by Annika Göran Rodell from Örebro University, where we closed our eyes as a group of 30 strangers and after being led through a meditation process, where we connected to our bodies and this present moment, we opened our eyes again as 30 individuals curious about each other and what they day could bring. Although this day contained many valuable conversations, I especially valued this check in, seeming as the feeling in the room really changed to a wonderful climate for creative discussion. After a short presentation on the purpose of the day, we dug into a vegan lunch.
In the first exercise, we did a conversation — three by three — where we rotated the roles as speaker, active listener (who could ask clarifying questions), and observer (who observed without intervening). In these groups of three, we reflected on the question “What does the future, sustainable university look like” for 10 minutes each, after which both the listener and observer summarized what the speaker had said. This was a great way to gain perspective on others’ thoughts but also on your own, by having them summarized by two other persons. After everyone had spoken, we drew a picture on a white board that’s symbolized our views on the future sustainable university.
Takeaways from this exercise was that the room held a lot of ideas but also frustration and yearning for action from the universities. Some mentioned what the campus should look like, others mentioned leadership and cooperation as important factors, and others mentioned cooperation between of different educational programs (Tvärvetenskaplighet in Swedish).
The largest part of the workshop was devoted to an exercise called World Café. This exercise consists of parallel group discussions around tables, where every 10 or 15 minutes the participants rotate and changed between the tables but with a moderator staying at the table. The moderator then summarizes what the earlier groups discussed when new people arrive at the table for the next round. In this way the conversations are built on each other and a pool of knowledge or ideas is assembled. The questions discussed at the four tables were:
- In what way does the universities need to change (including education)?
- What is the universities’ role in the societal transition?
- What is the students’ role in the transition?
- What is the role of non-students?
The discussions from the World Cafe we’re summarized in full group into an open letter which is meant to be sent to the head masters of all universities in Sweden. The letter contained our joint perspective on how the university should act in order to educate for the sustainable future and an emphasis of the urgence of this matter.
Learningoutcome and take-home message
After this day of workshopping, I was filled with energy and inspiration. Finally, something was happening at this frontier! Having presented this topic at the past pedagogical inspirational conference at LTH I knew that there were teachers who are engaged in this question. But meeting this network and all of these students I understood once again I am not alone in this fight – We are not alone. There are a lot of teachers and students out there who want to see a change in the university and in the education and the workshops such as this can make it all one step closer.
My call to action from you is to talk with your colleagues, and with your students, and with anyone in your context about these questions – what is the future university, a sustainable university, supposed to look like? What has to change to for us to reach it? What can I do? Who can I inspire? And finally, if you are willing to become more engaged in this question, I warmly recommend you contact the network and to see how you can help or to just become one of the allies in this project.
What I hope to see from LTH and Lund University are more contexts where we can come together and discuss this question. More workshops, more meetings, more networks. This is an urgent question and we need to unite and work together to build the university to sustainable university we see in our future. The future is close and every decision we take now effects when, how and how soon we reach our common sustainability goals.
