BUILDING TRANSDISCIPLINARY FACULTY COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE TO IMPROVE UNDERGRADUATE SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION

Addressing wicked problems such as climate change, increasing energy demand, and resource scarcity requires a citizenry and workforce armed with knowledge and skills that transcend disciplinary silos. Educating students that will grapple with these challenges necessitates instructional practices and materials that integrate across STEM, business, and the liberal arts. The NSF-funded Business and Science: Integrated Curriculum for Sustainability (BASICS) project brings together multidisciplinary cohorts of faculty at three institutions to create curricula that introduce undergraduate students to the transdisciplinary nature of wicked problems.

The project makes use of Local Learning Communities (LLCs) at each of the three project institutions to engage faculty in the development and implementation of the transdisciplinary curriculum modules. Two cohorts of faculty from each of the LLCs collaboratively designed exercises that allow students to engage with wicked problems such as water quality in the Mississippi River watershed and creating a sustainable circular economy. Faculty in each cohort piloted the “common exercise” to frame the problem in their courses, alongside discipline-specific exercises. The modules and faculty experiences were published on the BASICS website (https://serc.carleton.edu/basics) and used by two additional cohorts of faculty in their courses.

Participation in the LLCs afforded faculty opportunities to collaborate with colleagues across disciplines. In addition to building and piloting the modules, LLCs at each institution connected over the course of the two (2) two-year curriculum development and implementation cycles to build communities of practice that transcend disciplinary silos. The LLC approach encouraged faculty to learn from different disciplinary perspectives, departmental cultures, and student populations. Each LLC had its own motivations, approaches, and challenges reflecting their institutional context. Lessons learned from each of the LLCs will be published on the BASICS website so that a full suite of materials will be available for faculty at other institutions to build cross-disciplinary communities of practice and bring the benefits of transdisciplinary curriculum to their students.