Expanding Student Engagement in Sustainability: Using SDG- and CEL-Focused Inventories to Transform Curriculum at the University of Toronto

Abstract

The Expanded Student Engagement Project (ESE) has developed three comprehensive inventories which aim to increase student knowledge of sustainability-related course content and increase student engagement in on- and off-campus, curricular, and non-curricular sustainability projects at the University of Toronto (U of T). The first is a sustainability course inventory (SCI) generated using keyword search based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is the first SCI that has been based on the SDGs. The inventory identified 2022 unique sustainability courses and found that SDG 13 had the greatest representation and SDG 6 had the least. The second inventory is a community-engaged learning (CEL) sustainability inventory which found 154 sustainability-focused CEL courses and identified 86 faculty members who teach sustainability CEL. Finally, an inventory of sustainability co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities revealed that U of T has 67 sustainability-focused student groups and identified 263 sustainability-focused opportunities. These inventories are an important foundation for future initiatives to increase student engagement in sustainability on campus and in the community. The ESE will integrate this data into U of T’s course management system and use the inventories to develop a new sustainability pathways program.

Teaching for a Better World. Sustainability and Sustainable Development Goals in the Construction of a Change-Maker University

“…Some universities are beginning to make libraries of the experiences of promotion of SDGs in the field of teaching. For example, the University of Toronto has recently carried out an inventory that includes subjects-community-engaged learning and co-curricular and extra-curricular activities [72]. Another experience was carried out by Albareda-Tiana et al [32]; in this paper, the curricula of the International University of Catalonia were analyzed in order to find the relationship between the subjects and the SDGs.…”

“…It is necessary that actions to promote sustainability and the objectives of sustainable development have sufficient protection from the universities themselves and from the administrations (top-down support) [12,72]. Sometimes the work of professors is not valued enough.…”

An Analysis of Sustainability Integration in Business School Curricula: Evidence from Korea

“…Second, there is very little research that can place our findings in a comparative perspective. For example, while Brugmann et al [2] highlight that the maximum percentage of undergraduate courses in Canada that represent sustainability course offerings is 32% (with 1% being the minimum and 10% being the median), additional quantitative data on other regions is difficult to find. In addition, a critical discussion on whether a higher percentage of sustainability courses necessarily suggests better understanding and implementation of sustainability in a business context would further enrich the debate.…”

“…When it comes to business programs, the rationale for incorporating sustainability themes into the curriculum has been built on decades of discourse on business ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability on the one hand [1,2], and acute awareness that business practitioners play a crucial role in shaping the global sustainability agenda on the other [3]. This push to embed sustainability, or "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" [4] (p. 41), has accelerated in recent years with the implementation of initiatives such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).…”

Sustainable Development and Higher Education: Acting with a Purpose

“…Troft et al [17] describe experiences with participatory action research for undergraduates. In many ways, Brugmann et al [18] is a unique paper because it describes an undergraduate project written mainly by students. It describes inventories of courses and other university activities based on key words.…”