How Do You Teach Undergraduate University Students …
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• Creation of an educational space and programming in a community garden around
sustainable food production and nutrition. The educational programming was
divided into segments for low-income residents that used the garden and for students in grades 7–12.
• A design plan for a sustainable, educational, multi-purpose greenhouse with luminescent solar concentrators (LSC), a novel photovoltaic technology that generates
electricity from “wasted” light, and a biomass heating unit. The design was instrumental in securing a grant for construction costs and the greenhouse was built
within a year of the junior seminar.
• Creation of a sustainable, educational, edible hiking path for a regional middle
school and high school. The path was built according to plan within a year of the
junior seminar.
The UN SDGs investigated in the example of the sustainable hiking path are listed
in Table 3.
7 Year 4. ESS 600/610. Senior Project (Year
Long)—“Becoming an Agent of Change”
During their final year in the Environmental Science and Sustainability department,
all students are required to complete a year-long independent Senior Thesis Research
Project. The types of projects vary in topic and outcome, with some students’ final
product resembling a scientific journal article, while others may develop a business
plan, or conduct a policy or literature analysis. Despite extreme variation, students
are encouraged to think about their projects within a much broader framework. For
example, a student that has focused much of her research on the communities of bees
associated with certain flowering plants should not only be able to answer detailed
questions about pollination, but also place the importance of bee and plant diversity
in a larger environmental context. With the implementation of the UN SDGs as a
guide for the curriculum, the department now requires all students to relate their
project back to these goals. In their final product, students must identify the goals
that are related to their topic and report how their project helps in accomplishing
the UN SDGs. For many students, their projects will relate to a large number of the
goals and understanding the global context of a small thesis project is important.
Many students are only interested in stopping climate change, but seem to have little
understanding as to how projects such as setting up a campus bike-share program
relate to that much larger goal. The goal of requiring students to relate their projects
to the UN SDGs will aid in the understanding that small, incremental movements in
the right direction are benefitting the larger aims of the United Nations.
An example of a Senior Thesis Project that encompassed several of the UN
SDGs focused on developing a climate adaptation plan for fairtrade vanilla growers in Uganda (Kelley 2016). The student analyzed existing literature to determine
what factors will influence smallholder vanilla farmers’ decisions in adapting to
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• Creation of an educational space and programming in a community garden around
sustainable food production and nutrition. The educational programming was
divided into segments for low-income residents that used the garden and for students in grades 7–12.
• A design plan for a sustainable, educational, multi-purpose greenhouse with luminescent solar concentrators (LSC), a novel photovoltaic technology that generates
electricity from “wasted” light, and a biomass heating unit. The design was instrumental in securing a grant for construction costs and the greenhouse was built
within a year of the junior seminar.
• Creation of a sustainable, educational, edible hiking path for a regional middle
school and high school. The path was built according to plan within a year of the
junior seminar.
The UN SDGs investigated in the example of the sustainable hiking path are listed
in Table 3.
7 Year 4. ESS 600/610. Senior Project (Year
Long)—“Becoming an Agent of Change”
During their final year in the Environmental Science and Sustainability department,
all students are required to complete a year-long independent Senior Thesis Research
Project. The types of projects vary in topic and outcome, with some students’ final
product resembling a scientific journal article, while others may develop a business
plan, or conduct a policy or literature analysis. Despite extreme variation, students
are encouraged to think about their projects within a much broader framework. For
example, a student that has focused much of her research on the communities of bees
associated with certain flowering plants should not only be able to answer detailed
questions about pollination, but also place the importance of bee and plant diversity
in a larger environmental context. With the implementation of the UN SDGs as a
guide for the curriculum, the department now requires all students to relate their
project back to these goals. In their final product, students must identify the goals
that are related to their topic and report how their project helps in accomplishing
the UN SDGs. For many students, their projects will relate to a large number of the
goals and understanding the global context of a small thesis project is important.
Many students are only interested in stopping climate change, but seem to have little
understanding as to how projects such as setting up a campus bike-share program
relate to that much larger goal. The goal of requiring students to relate their projects
to the UN SDGs will aid in the understanding that small, incremental movements in
the right direction are benefitting the larger aims of the United Nations.
An example of a Senior Thesis Project that encompassed several of the UN
SDGs focused on developing a climate adaptation plan for fairtrade vanilla growers in Uganda (Kelley 2016). The student analyzed existing literature to determine
what factors will influence smallholder vanilla farmers’ decisions in adapting to