From left, students Leslie Saunders, Dale Prest, Anita Nipen, and professor Tarah Wright practise winter tree identification through the Environment Sustainability and Society program at Dalhousie University.
From left, students Leslie Saunders, Dale Prest, Anita Nipen, and professor Tarah Wright practise winter tree identification through the Environment Sustainability and Society program at Dalhousie University.
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Race and civil liberties found their voice on the 1960's campus. For today's universities, it's the drumbeat of threatened natural resources and climate change that echoes across campuses and their curricula.
From carbon offsets for conference attendees to research on poisoned belugas in the St. Lawrence, and from automatically dimming lighting in lecture halls to a course on literature and the environment, it's all getting a warm reception across Canada.
Dalhousie, Simon Fraser, McGill and Ryerson Universities all recently put their administrative seals on some major eco-initiatives: Dalhousie will be welcoming new students this September to its College of Sustainability, part of a five-faculty Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS) program; Simon Fraser's senate gave the green light to a new environmental faculty, which will bring together five existing programs; McGill just cut the ribbon for an Office of Sustainability; and Ryerson has added a Certificate in Sustainability option for its continuing education students.
The boom in environmental awareness and jobs markets is creating an endless appetite for green campus initiatives. There are 239 university-based environmental education programs across Canada, according to ECO Canada, a group that promotes environmental employment and sets standards for the sector.
Dalhousie's College of Sustainability is responding to the increase in demand in an innovative way. While most university environmental programs exist as separate departments or faculties, the professors at the College of Sustainability will be teaching from their various existing faculties. With one-fifth of the university's current research involving some type of sustainability issue, Steven Mannell, the College's director, was interested in harnessing that interest.
"We wanted this to add up to more than the sum of our parts," he said, adding that the College hopes to "break down the territoriality" too often found in universities.
So, the physicist who has an interest in the effect of China's Three Gorges Dam can approach the College to teach a course, while remaining a pure physicist back in his department. The same goes for the computer science professor looking at disaster modelling or the management lecturer looking at the risks and benefits of green businesses. Students, too, remain part of their original department, but graduate from Dal with a joint degree that will have the name of a traditional discipline written on it next to the letters ESS.
While five faculties have already agreed to second professors to the college for a third of their time on a three-year basis, more faculties will likely sign on. And in terms of student numbers, the College is confident it will not only welcome 150 students this coming fall and 300 by the third year, but that it will eventually reach its ceiling of 1,000 students.
Simon Fraser has had a strong environmental tradition, from subsidizing bus passes to building energy efficient buildings. But like many other universities across the country, it is choosing amalgamation to build its new faculty. The yet-to-be named faculty will bring together SFU's School of Resource and Environmental Management, Department of Geography, the Centre for Sustainable Community Development, the Environmental Science Program, and the Graduate Certificate Program in Development Studies.
Jonathan Driver, SFU's vice-president, academic, sees in this both an opportunity for more interdisciplinary research and a way to channel the enthusiasm for making a difference that he sees in the high-school students at recruitment fairs.
"The university is one of the few places to pull together people to try and understand the implications of these problems."
With all these changes in curricula, could there be a danger that universities might be pandering to fashion and a group of impassioned students?
Yves Gingras is a history professor and holder of the Canada Research Chair in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Quebec at Montreal. He says there has long been skepticism of environmental faculties, going back to the first wave of environmental interest in the early '70s when those who saw it as an exciting new interdisciplinary area had to argue with those who pooh-poohed it as a fad.
While he sees legitimate academic work being done, Prof. Gingras says universities need to be careful not to create some sort of artificial program that simply satisfies a transient demand.
"Universities need to create long-term programs that offer a basic training wide enough in scope to open many avenues. They particularly have to be careful not to focus on short-term demands and know-how related to very specific industries."
The enthusiasm for the environment cannot be denied on campuses across the country. And universities seem to be capitalizing on it to try to both refresh the curriculum and green their campuses.
One of those enthusiastic voices at McGill comes from the senior ranks. Jim Nicell, vice-principal, university services, has a background in the environment, something that he said he told his bosses upon his appointment would influence his work in helping to run the operations of the university.
"I made it clear to them that my experience as an environmental engineer was going to inform my decisions." That does not seem to have been a problem and has helped in making the Office of Sustainability a reality. The Office hopes to become a hothouse of sorts, taking student and faculty sustainable ideas to a practical application, archive other projects and ideas, and even be a demonstration office for various eco-friendly products to export to the rest of the campus.
For McGill environment student Maggie Knight, who was standing on a floor made from recycled drywall near the organic Macintosh apples that were set out with other snacks during the Office's launch, student involvement in projects like the university's bike collective or guerrilla composting has a lot to do with finding concrete actions for all their time on theoretical projects.
"We spend hundreds of hours on our studies. It's good to make it count for something."
Special to the Globe and Mail
