University of Iowa
IN-2: Innovation 2

The Sustainable Citizen Program - this unique classroom offering that focuses on building the capacity of society to conduct civil and inclusive public discussion regarding sustainability to engender action.

The Sustainable Citizen Program is the product of an ongoing Department of Education (FIPSE program) funded effort focused on the growth of campus living-learning communities for the creation of sustainable citizens. These sustainable citizens will be equipped with sophisticated skills in democratic dialoguing and systems thinking. These sustainable citizens will embrace literacy and applied math, and they will exhibit an ability to find useful information. Most importantly, these sustainable citizens will graduate with a mindset geared toward enabling a more sustainable society through collective action.

At the core of the Sustainable Citizen Program is a 3-credit hour Introduction to Sustainability course for first-year post-secondary students from any major. A Skeptic’s Guide to Sustainability has been written and serves as the primary curricular tool to begin dialogue among potentially disparate student groups. Students are asked to identify as a Skeptical Humanitarian, a Skeptical Capitalist, or a Skeptical Environmentalist as a personal perspective through which to view sustainability studies. The purpose of the Skeptic’s Guide to Sustainability is to meet students at a position of comfort before drawing them into more complex dialoguing and systems thinking regarding “wicked issues” such as climate change or global poverty. As the wicked issues are explored in groups, the dialogue many times proves discomforting in the context of the attitudes, behaviors and skill sets individual students bring to the classroom. Teaching modules that utilize National Geographic Magazine articles as primers for exploring issues of sustainability are currently being developed and assessed in this course.

Outside the classroom, the students are required to explore the local community through attendance at city council meetings, public lectures, planning meetings and the like. Students complete a three-part reflection and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis as evidence of service-learning with the “service partner” being broadly defined as “democracy” or “community.” The students are literally in service to, and with, representative democracy while enrolled in the course. For campus learning community coordinators that cannot partner with faculty for the offering of the Introduction to Sustainability course, the Sustainable Citizen Program provides educational modules, assessment tools and how-to guides that can supplement any existing learning community activities. A workshop series and interactive website have been created to facilitate training and provide resources for the successful adoption of the Sustainable Citizen Program.

Outcomes: Participants will become aware of the online resources and sustainability teaching modules available for use in their own learning settings. And, more importantly, participants will learn how to evaluate and assess student learning “beyond the grade” in the context of these Sustainable Citizen Program learning resources.

Educational or Professional Activities and Organizations Impacted: AEESP, AASHE, and others.