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Several area educators interested in incorporating sustainability into the curriculum, in classrooms and in the community met Monday in a daylong faculty workshop at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s Lovejoy Library.

One of the goals of the Mississippi Project IV: Green Curriculum, Green Campus, Green Community was “to help faculty explore the shift in pedagogy from a paradigm of teacher as expert to teacher as facilitator of learning, becoming co-learners with students and with one another,” said Dr. Connie Frey Spurlock, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies and Sustainability Faculty Fellow.

Spurlock and Kevin Adkins, SIUE sustainability officer, were the seminar facilitators. The training will also be offered from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 11 in the Lovejoy Library Third Floor Conference Room.

“We were dealing with love and empathy as part of the theoretical background for sustainability as well as practical ways to teach and implement sustainability,” Spurlock said. “We want faculty to develop a heart for the subject in order to reach students in the same way.”

Priscilla Hammon, coordinator for Illinois Military Family Initiative Reveille Network in Granite City, said she sees the need for sustainability because it will help put relationships first again.

“It’s important to get back to connectedness as a community,” Hammon said. “For instance, by going to neighborhood food markets, people tend to talk more to one another. Talking can lead to networking, and networking can have an impact on jobs and businesses.”

Dr. Paul Rose, chair and associate professor in the SIUE Department of Psychology, said he came to the workshop to look for ways to infuse sustainability ideas into his teaching.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Rose said. “Also, the higher education market is sensitive to these issues. I don’t think we can be as competitive as a university if we do not persist and continue to be successful in our sustainability efforts.”

Spurlock told the group of eleven educators that SIUE Chancellor Julie Furst-Bowe has been a champion of sustainability on campus.

Patrick McKeehan, director of SIUE’s Metro East Small Business Development Center, came to the workshop to learn more about sustainability and how to help business students understand and promote it.

“When the market place accepts and understands sustainability,” McKeehan said, “it will drive a lot of the activity.”

Sustainability can be viewed from a place of feeling and finance, according to Jessica Trout, program coordinator for the Lyn Huxford Center for Community Service at McKendree College. “I think it’s important to use empathy and love with markets and economy,” Trout said. “Sustainability does and can impact people’s lives in social ways, but it is also important to engage the markets that help drive the consumer to make sustainable choices.”

The SIUE Sustainability Officer summed up the topic of sustainability as a quality of life issue.

“The key to being happy is sustainability,”” Adkins said. “”Research shows that happiness is not economically driven. People want employment that means something to them. The more sustainable we are as a community, the more time and energy we will have to connect with family, nurture our other relationships and simply breathe.””

Photos:

Dr. Connie Frey Spurlock, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice Studies and Sustainability Faculty Fellow, discusses ways to infuse sustainability into the curriculum.

Kevin Adkins, SIUE sustainability officer, talks about the correlation between retention rates and graduation rates with sustainability.

Joe Martinich, founder’s professor in the College of Business at the University of Missouri at St. Louis, said the workshop will help him think of exactly how he can present sustainability in his classroom.