- This event has passed.
Webinar: Building Sustainability Competencies via Classroom and Programmatic Learning — Points of Good Practice
As academic consensus solidifies around the names, content, and number of sustainability competencies, and as colleges and universities begin embracing the responsibility of helping students develop them within classroom, program, internship, and campus contexts, educators are asking good questions on how best to proceed.
What is a competency framework? Why are there so many different ones and which is right for me? What are the “8 key competencies” I hear so much about? How do faculty and deans articulate such competencies as learning or programmatic goals? What pedagogies work best in fostering them? How do they contribute to student employability? How do we assess such competencies? And how do they relate to quality assurance and institutional accreditation?
This webinar addresses these and related questions by looking at how institutions strive to build student sustainability competencies at both classroom and programmatic levels.
Presenters
 |
Scott G. Blair, Content Development Editor, Sulitest Impact, Paris France Scott G. Blair, PhD, is Content Development Editor at Sulitest Impact, a social enterprise dedicated to assessing sustainability literacy in higher education. His recent roles include Director of Accreditation and Quality Assurance at AIAASC; Vice President of CANIE-Europe; and Affiliate at the Gateway International Group, LLC. He served on the faculties of the University of New Haven, the Institut National des Sciences Politiques, the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, and the American University of Paris. He was the Resident Director at Boston College Paris and Director of Assessment & Sustainability at TEAN. Based in Paris, he has worked in education for some 40 years—as professor, Academic Director, Director of Assessment, Director of Sustainability. His research appears in Frontiers, Routledge and Stylus publications and he is a regular speaker at educational conferences on learning outcomes assessment and international program design around sustainability literacy, ecopedagogy, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Blair holds a doctorate in history from the Sorbonne, an MA from Georgetown University, and a BA from Miami of Ohio. |
 |
Aaron Redman, Sustainability, Climate, and Education Expert and Consultant Aaron Redman is a Sustainability, Climate, and Education expert and consultant. In 2020 he completed his PhD in Sustainability from Arizona State University (ASU). Aaron’s dissertation focused on clarifying a framework of key competencies in sustainability (what we students need to learn) and how to assess these competencies (measuring whether they are learning it). Currently he is applying his expertise in sustainability assessment both on a recent consultancy for UNESCO as well as for the GreenEdTech Project led by Aalborg University in Denmark where Aaron is leading the assessment team. Aaron has recently joined the Sustainability Education Accreditation Commission (SEAC), an exciting new initiative built around operationalizing the key competencies. Beyond the aforementioned projects, Aaron has taught sustainability courses for ASU for over eight years as well as wide range of international consulting funded by organizations such as USAID, IFLA, UNESCO, UNITAR and more. Aaron works for the MECCE Project (Canada) on innovating new climate communication and education data and indicators. He has been engaged annually since 2021 by the 10 New Insights in Climate Science project summarizing and translating the latest climate research for global policymakers. Prior to completing his dissertation, he contributed to the Educating Future Change Agents project, a joint research project between Leuphana University in Germany and ASU focusing education best practices to support attaining key competencies in sustainability. Aaron also has worked as a sustainability professor in Leon, Mexico, and a Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador. He received his Master’s of Science in Sustainability from ASU. |
 |
Krista Hiser, Director of the Sustainability Education Accreditation Commission (SEAC) Dr. Krista Hiser is Director of the Sustainability Education Accreditation Commission (SEAC). She recently served as Senior Advisor for Sustainability Education at the Global Council for Science and the Environment, and on the founding Board of the National Sustainability Society. Based in Honolulu, Hawaii, she was the first director of the University of Hawaii Center for Sustainability Across the Curriculum and is an active sustainability leader with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Her doctorate is in Educational Administration, and her research focuses on climate education, sustainability curriculum, and service learning. She teaches at Kapiʻolani Community College with an emphasis on sustainability, climate change education, service-learning, and community resilience. |