1. Making it Real for Faculty and Students
Sustainability Across the Curriculum
Fostering Enthusiasm!
Making it Real for Faculty and Students

2. High Level Commitments- Strategic, Academic and Business Plans
Key Learnings
High Level Commitments- Strategic, Academic and Business Plans
Build on Existing Strengths
Identify Champions- Faculty talking to Faculty
Make it Relevant- Resources that enhance what faculty are already doing
Make it Relatable- Apply sustainability to specific programs of study- and life outside of campus

3. Building on our Strengths
Cobourg Campus
Peterborough Campus
- Sutherland
Trish: We started by building on strengths that already exist across our College. For example, our Frost Campus has 40 years experience in Applied Learning in Sustainability. On campus there’s a green house, community gardens, aquaculture tanks that hold wild salmon that are re-introduced to Lake Ontario, renewable energy features ( geothermal, passive solar, wind) and much more. The work of Frost is also going international with the Centre for Alternative Wastewater Treatment that uses constructed wetlands to purify water. Their research is being applied in Northern Canada, China and India . Other programs include Fish and Wildlife and Eco-System Management and new programs in Urban Forestry and Sustainable Agriculture. The School has always been about applied learning- and students love the hands-on experience they get there. We are very fortunate to have this School as the foundation of sustainability for the College.
Haliburton Campus
Lindsay Campus - Frost
- School of Environment and Natural Resources

4. High Level Commitments
“Infuse sustainability across the curriculum so that graduates understand and address sustainability issues.”
Fleming College Strategic Plan
Trish: In 2010, we made sustainability a key pillar of our Strategic plan. The plan committed to “infuse sustainability across the curriculum so that graduates understand and address sustainability issues” by From there we developed a Five Year Sustainability Plan which is implemented through Annual Action plans. Today we have sustainability embedded in our most recent Strategic Plan, Business Plan and Academic Plan. These high level commitments gave us the mandate to act.

5. Champions Across Schools Program Areas Sustainability Aspect
Community Development & Health
Early Childhood Education –emphasis on nature education, reducing plastic toys, Children’s Health and the Environment a required course
Skilled Trades
All students take Environmental issues for Industry course, sustainability embedded in Carpentry Programs practices
Haliburton Campus
School of Arts-Sustainable Building & Design program – sustainable building of community projects- from design to construction & Integrated Design Program-
Tourism
Students learn the Impacts of commercial tourism; participate in community service
Business
Required CSR Courses, Sustainability Applied Projects: i.e. LEED Assessments
General Arts & Sciences – Communications
Sustainability issues used for skills development
Indigenous Perspectives
Traditional sustainable concepts being introduced across schools. “Seven Generations Ahead”- Water Event
Jane: Building on on the experience of our Frost campus, we found ‘sustainability champions” across the whole of the College. We found faculty quietly bringing sustainability into the classroom- in ways that really engage students. One faculty member is passionate about nature education- and so it is a key feature of our Early Childhood Educators program. Our Haliburton Campus has a program devoted to Sustainable Building and Design. Last year, students built a solar powered building to provide a recreation facility for youth in a small northern community. Business faculty have embedded sustainability into CSR and Management Courses and have students do applied projects- helping with LEED assessments on local buildings and finding energy savings. Our Indigenous Perspectives faculty help provide the foundation for how we approach sustainability. So our first action was to bring all of these champions together as an “Academic Task Force” and they are instrumental in guiding our work.

6. Relevant and Relatable
Academic Task Force- Champions / Best Practices- Workshops, Professional Development, Videos
Sustainability in Curriculum - Renewal and Co-Curricular Record UNESCO,1997
Relevant Resources:
On-Line Library for all programs
“Step-by-Step” Guide for faculty
Indigenous Partnerships
Jane: Our Faculty Task Force helps make sustainability relevant to what they do and relatable for students. Sustainability has now been integrated into our Curriculum Renewal. We created on-line resources including a library full of great videos and articles they can add to their modules. We created a “Step-by-Step” Guide to integrating sustainability into courses. So rather than introduce sustainability as a new concept, teachers found they could relate to UNESCO descriptions here to their own teaching practice- so that is what we use.. The College’s focus on Indigenous Perspectives also really grounds sustainability in practical knowledge and practices. We had a “Seven Generations Ahead”- community forum where Elders shared knowledge on water protection- one of these was Josephine Mandamin who walked around all of the Great Lakes to raise awareness about the need to protect those lakes. Students also have access to Elders and Indigenous Knowledge courses.

7. Sustainability Awareness Survey Importance to Curriculum
67% said it’s
“important
or extremely
Important”-
Trish: We wanted to know how sustainability resonates with students and we conducted a Sustainability Awareness Survey. Fully 67% said that having sustainability in the curriculum was either important or extremely important. They talked about student projects- really tangible activities- as the best way to bring sustainability to the classroom. So all this along with direction from our VP Academic, gave us the tools we needed to implement a Sustainability Learning Outcome across all our diploma programs.

8. Learning Outcome
Explain the interconnections between the broad principles of sustainability-which include human health and well-being, ecological health, social issues, and secure livelihoods-in order to support a better world for all generations.
Jane: For our learning outcome we found the three pillars definition of sustainability is just too abstract for people. We got a lot of input from faculty, leadership and curriculum experts. They said be descriptive about what sustainability means and everyone agreed the AASHE definition worked well. We also wanted to make it achievable- so we are starting by making sure students can explain sustainability. The key for us is for students to be able to make “interconnections” . Too often the focus can be on one single element of sustainability- so just the environmental aspect or just the economic aspect. So we also developed Elements of Performance based on the UNESCO graph you saw earlier- really emphasizing the importance of interconnections between say ecological health= the health of the natural world- social justice and secure livelihoods.

9. Required Course Examples
Skilled Trades Programs, Environmental Issues for Industry
Nursing, Professional Aspects of Nursing
Business Programs, Management Essentials, CSR
Social Service Programs, Social Justice and Diversity
Integrated Design, Introduction to Sustainability
Programs in the School of Environment and Natural Resource Sciences, Skills for Sustainability and Stewardship
The Learning Outcome is now in close to 90% of Our Diploma Programs through required courses!
Jane: We looked at Required Courses across all of our diploma programs to find those that would be a natural fit for the Learning Outcome. We then worked with faculty teaching those courses one-one and provided resources to make integrating the outcome easy.

10. https://youtu.be/ci1pP8Am8D0 Sustainability2 Youtube
Our Story
Sustainability2 Youtube
Trish: The most important thing for us has been to bring together the real experiences of Fleming’s faculty, students and administration - so we worked with them so they could tell their own stories of Sustainability at the College. So we will share that with you now.

11. High Level Commitments- Strategic, Academic and Business Plans
Key Learnings
High Level Commitments- Strategic, Academic and Business Plans
Build on Existing Strengths
Identify Champions- Faculty talking to Faculty
Make it Relevant- Resources that enhance what faculty are already doing
Make it Relatable- Apply sustainability to specific programs of study- and life outside of campus
Trish: