Over the coming decades, every academic discipline will have to respond to the paradigm of more sustainable life practices because students will be living in a world challenged by competition for resources and climate change, and will demand that every academic discipline demonstrate substantial and corresponding relevance.

This book takes as its point of departure that integrating a component of sustainability into a discipline-specific course arises from an educator asking a simple question: in the coming decades, as humanity faces unprecedented challenges, what can my discipline or area of research contribute toward a better understanding of these issues? The discipline need not be future-oriented: an archaeologist, for instance, could incorporate into a course some aspects of sustainable archaeological practices in areas threatened by rapid climate change, as well as examples of sustainable or unsustainable ways of living practiced by members of the long-gone society under investigation.

This book also argues that courses about sustainability need to cross disciplinary boundaries, both because of the inter-relatedness of the issues, and because students will require the ability to use interdisciplinary approaches to thrive through the multiple careers most of them will face.

The contributions to this book are presented under four sections. “Sustainability as a Core Value in Education” considers the rationale for incorporating sustainability in disciplinary courses. “Teaching Sustainability in the Academic Disciplines” presents eight examples of courses from disciplines as varied as agriculture, composition, engineering, and teacher education. “Education as a Sustainable Practice” reviews how the physical environment of the classroom and the delivery of instruction need themselves to reflect the values being taught. The final section addresses the issues of leadership and long-term institutional change needed to embed sustainable practice as a core value on campus.

Table of Contents:

I. Sustainability as a Core Value in Education
Sustainability for Everyone: Trespassing Disciplinary Boundaries—Douglas Klahr
Sustainability as a Core Issue in Diversity and Critical Thinking Education—Danielle Lake
Sustainable Happiness and Education: Educating Teachers and Students in the 21st Century—Catherine O’Brien
A Christian Approach to Sustainability—Chris Doran

II. Teaching Sustainability in the Academic Disciplines
Re-Envisioning Ecocomposition: The Rhetoric of Sustainable Energy and the Ecology of Writing—Kimberly R. Moekle
Sustainably Growing Farmers of the Future: Undergraduate Curriculum in Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Kentucky—Keiko Tanaka, Mark Williams, Krista Jacobson and Mike Mullen
Using a Multi-level Approach to Teach Sustainability to Undergraduate Students in Engineering and Environmental Science—Bruce I. Dvorak, Stacey A. Hawkey and Valdeen Nelsen
Environmental Sustainability in Healthcare Management Education—Carrie Rich
Teaching Ecotourism in the Backyard of Waikiki, Hawai‘I—John Cusick
Writing Banana Republics and Guano Bonanzas: Consumerism and Globalization in the Composition Classroom—George E. Brooks
The Hungry Text: Toward a Sustainable Literary Food Pedagogy—Tom Hertweck and Kyle Bladow
Who Will Teach the Teachers? Re-orienting Teacher Education for the Values of Sustainability—Patrick Howard

III. Education as a Sustainable Practice
Eportfolios in a Liberal Studies Program: An Experiment in Sustainability—P. Sven Arvidson
The Paperless Classroom—Kirsten Bartels and Justin Pettibone
Communicating Sustainability: Teaching Sustainable Media Practice—Alex Lockwood
Unsustainable Aspects of Sustainability—Bart Bartels

IV. Leadership and Reform Strategies for Long-term Institutional Change
Teaching Sustainability Leadership—Courtney Quinn and Gina Matkin
Teaching Sustainability to Future Professionals in Cultural Resource Organizations—Sarah S. Brophy
Breaking the “Methodological Trap” of Sustainability in Academia with Global Learning Environments—Tamara Savelyeva
Making Sustainability a Core Value—Christine Drewel