Wilfrid Laurier University
AC-10: Support for Research

1) The Capstone Urban Sustainability Project (CUSP) is a credit course offered annually by the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Each year since 2015, CUSP has offered a new challenge and experience for 4th year undergraduate students. The project adopts a collaborative case-study approach, recruiting teams of students who work together to analyse and resolve an identified urban or local issue within the Region of Waterloo, bringing to bear their understanding of both human and physical geography and environmental sustainability. Students work on a project that has been identified as a research need by a community partner, such as a municipality. The community partner for CUSP since 2015 has been the City of Cambridge, Ontario. The project is intended to deal with aspects of urban planning and development with a solution grounded in principles of sustainability, and professional practice. Incentives for taking this course could include hands-on research experience with real-world problems that can prepare students with the critical thinking skills and research experience needed for the job market. 2) Preserving Earth’s natural and social systems is amongst the most important challenges currently facing the global community. Although global in scale, issues of climate change, population growth and economic instability have immediate concerns for us at the local level, as we strive to maintain the integrity of our resources – clean and accessible air, water, food, etc. For this reason, Laurier offers a Sustainability option that will allow students to critically examine these issues from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. The Sustainability Option offers students an opportunity to: a) Learn how to consider and integrate issues related to environmental resilience, community well-being and economic prosperity; and b) Engage in interdisciplinary critical analysis and thinking by connecting courses across departments and faculties. Completion of the option requirements will result in a "Sustainability Option" designation on the student transcript. The Sustainability Option consists of a minimum of 4.0 credits. Students must complete three required core courses (1.5 credits) and five elective courses (2.5 credits) selected from the following Sustainability themes (Science or Issues). Below are examples of research-based courses that are offered in the Science and Issues themes: Science theme: • Communication and Critical Thinking Skills in Biology: In this course, the cultivation of critical thinking and self-disciplined learning skills in the biological sciences is fostered by the identification, investigation and elucidation of core concepts, problems, and controversies associated with selected issues facing modern society. Potential topics could include: water resources, food security, climate change, ecosystem conservation, biodiversity. Students will develop competency in: formulating hypotheses; gathering and assessing information; communicating ideas, both orally and in writing; and engaging their peers in substantive discussion and problem-solving. Students in this course participate in a poster conference where they have the opportunity to display their research project. • Hydrology: An overview of hydrological processes with emphasis on Canadian examples; the hydrological cycle; surface hydrology; groundwater hydrology; measurement techniques. Field components will involve a short trip to a long-term study site near Maryhill, about 15 minutes from Waterloo. Research from this site, Strawberry Creek Watershed, has resulted in several undergraduate and graduate theses. Issues theme: • Research Seminar on nature and Environment in Canadian History: A research seminar based on important examples of recent interdisciplinary approaches to historical study of the environment. Themes include attitudes to nature and perceptions of the environment, with a view to developing useful applications to related topics in Canadian history • Capstone Urban Sustainability Project: In this capstone course, students will work on a project within a problem-based learning context that deals with aspects of urban planning and development. Students will research, analyze and resolve a local issue identified by a community partner and propose solutions grounded in principles of sustainability. • Semester in Community Engagement: This capstone course in the Community Engagement Option provides the opportunity to demonstrate and deepen the understanding of themes, models, and concepts in community engagement that have been developed in CMEG300 and CMEG301. Knowledge and skills will be refined, applied and assessed through directed studies, reflection seminars, and in-depth participation in a capstone project at The Working Centre in downtown Kitchener.

Individual scholarship continues to make important contributions to research excellence. At the same time, Laurier also recognizes the enormous potential of interdisciplinary teams working collaboratively and the value of partnerships to address the complex and diverse problems faced by society today. Interdisciplinary research is emerging as a major emphasis throughout Laurier to approach substantive issues. A prime goal of our past research strategy in this area has been the creation of interdisciplinary university research centres to support synergies among researchers in fields that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This is not intended to undermine traditional disciplines. Instead, our overriding objective is to build on existing strengths in basic and applied research and to spearhead the development of research in emerging areas where the university believes it can develop future strengths. We recognize, however, that strong interdisciplinary developments are based on strengths in the basic disciplines underlying those collaborations. Laurier’s thematic research clusters are self-consciously interdisciplinary in character, given Laurier’s current research objective to create synergies across disciplines and departments. Individual departments, faculties, and research teams may have researchers in more than one cluster. Evidence of this can be seen in the interdisciplinary exhibited by many of our research centres, research chairs, and graduate programs.

Capstone Urban Sustainability Project (CUSP): https://www.wlu.ca/academics/faculties/faculty-of-arts/c3-innovation-labs/cusp.html CUSP Blog: http://cusplaurier.blogspot.com/2018/ CUSP Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_tn1Lif_T8 Options to enhance your degree at Laurier: https://www.wlu.ca/academics/options-to-enhance-your-degree/index.html Laurier Undergraduate Academic Calendar 2017/2018: Sustainability Option: https://academic-calendar.wlu.ca/program.php?cal=1&d=1718&p=3625&s=829&y=73