In this episode, Carol speaks with Drs. Rebecca Watts Hull and Evan Mallen about the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals and how they can be used effectively in the classroom across disciplines and school.
In this episode, Carol speaks with Drs. Rebecca Watts Hull and Evan Mallen about the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals and how they can be used effectively in the classroom across disciplines and school.
Carol Subiño Sullivan(00:13):
Welcome to the Teaching and Learning Buzz, a podcast by the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia Tech. I'm your host, Dr. Carol Subiño Sullivan, assistant director of faculty teaching and learning at CTL. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about the United Nations, sustainable development goals and how we might think about incorporating them into our courses to help us think through this. I'm joined by Dr. Rebecca Watts Hull, service learning and partnership specialist at Georgia Tech Center for Serve, Learn, Sustain, and adjunct and academic professional in the School of History and Sociology. And I'm also joined by Dr. Evan Mallen. At the time of this recording, he's a postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Teaching and Learning and a researcher in the Urban Climate Law Lab in the School of City and Regional Planning. And by the time this episode is released, he'll be an orise fellowwith the Oak Ridge national laboratory in the climate and health program at the CDC. Welcome Rebecca and Evan! So I think probably the, the first question to get us started is just to start with the basics. Um, Evan, do you think you could tell us a little bit about what the United nations sustainable development goals are?
Evan Mallen(01:40):
Sure. So the, uh, UN SDGs as we call them, came from a UN initiative called the 2030 agenda for sustainable development came around in 2015, and they described the SDGs as a blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet now and into the future. But at the core, this is a set of 17 goals. Each numbered that you want is prioritized to significantly advance global sustainability. But what I really love about these goals, and why I think that they're a useful tool as part of your curriculum is their comprehensive inclusivity. They cover issues of sustainability in a traditional sense, um, almost synonymous with environmental sustainability or going green, as you might say, for example, uh, number 13, climate action, uh, number 14, life below water, 15 life on land, but it also includes several, uh, social environmental justice issues. Like number one, no poverty, uh, four quality education, five gender equality, some clearly draw the line or draw connection between, uh, environmental sustainability and social justice just right in the name, number seven affordable and clean energy, not just focusing on the technology or number eight decent work and economic growth or 11, uh, my particular area of expertise, sustainable cities and communities, and being so inclusive. There's kind of a way that everyone can be connecting with the SDGs. So very briefly, this is, this is what they are and why we like to use it.
Carol (3:10):
Ah, thanks, Evan. Um, it, it is, you know, 17, it's sort of a lot to take in, but we will in the show notes, have a link to some more information, including some really great visuals that sort of help get a better sense of the whole, like you, I also find the framework really inspiring and the way that it just brings all of these different aspects about what we think about when we think about sustainability and, and maybe expands beyond what that initial assumption of maybe just like strictly environmental issues to think about these broader human, um, components to sustainability. And I know that both of you for some time now, and in more focused ways, maybe more recently at Georgia tech have been working on initiatives related to the sustainable development goals. And Rebecca, I wonder if you might start us off, um, talking a little bit about the type of work that you've been doing with the SDGs.
Rebecca Watts Hull(04:10):
Sure. Be happy to. And, um, for folks who are listening, who may not be familiar with serve, learn, sustain, um, serve, learn, sustain brings both community engagement and sustainability, sustainable development into the curriculum at Georgia Tech. And in both of those areas, the sustainable development goals have been a really useful frame. And I think I'll start with the partnership or the community engagement piece where serve learning sustains involvement with the SDGs in terms of partnerships really took off was in 2017 a couple of years before I came on board, when our director, Jenny Hirsch, co-founded the RCE Greater Atlanta with colleagues at Spelman and Emery. RCE stands for regional center of expertise on education for sustainable development. It's part of the United Nations University and Greater Atlanta's RCE is one of more than 170 RCEs around the world. And it's all about partnerships for advancing the SDGs. Since its founding in 2017,
Rebecca (05:26):
Um, several more Atlanta area colleges and universities have joined with Georgia Tech within the RCE, as well as community-based organizations and individuals working in a wide range of fields related to sustainability. Greater Atlanta is our RCE aims to create a new regional model for collective impact on the SDGs by harnessing the capacity that's within those members’ colleges, universities and organizations. In addition, our RCE in particular has prioritized nurturing youth engagement and youth leadership in education and action for the SDGs, which brings me to my SDG work on Georgia Tech's campus within the curriculum. Serve, learn, sustain student workers have been closely involved in the work of the RCE. And it's been clear to me that they find the SDGs to be a really helpful framework for identifying as Edmond was saying earlier, the inner connections between global challenges, as well as connections between local and global.
Rebecca (06:37):
So they have been seeking to identify courses where the SDGs have been integrated. And in order to support faculty in doing that SDG integration into their courses, SLS has developed a number of tools within our teaching toolkit that include resources as well as sample lessons that can be adapted to a wide range of disciplines. At the same time, we've been collaborating with CTL and with other partners in the RCE to offer workshops for faculty on teaching with the SDGs and, uh, integrating the SDGs into their course design. And we plan on continue supporting that work possibly in the short term, through a faculty learning community or community of practice that would connect faculty with each other. And with course design and SDG resources across multiple colleges and universities. And again, the RCE Greater Atlanta is a great mechanism as a network for supporting those connections. Last, we're also exploring ways at SLS that we can expand and more widely share the teaching toolkit because we know that there's more and more, uh, work along these lines, taking place at lots of colleges and universities. So we want to make sure that we're not reinventing the wheel and that we're helping other higher education institutions share their resources so that we can all benefit from the great work that's happening globally in this space.
Carol(08:19):
And that the teaching toolkit is a really amazing resource. I've spent some time looking through there myself. And so we'll be sure to link to it and specifically some of the SDG resources in the show notes, so that listeners can go ahead and explore some more along with that. Evan, would you like to, to add to that. What other kinds of works have you been doing related to the SDGs at Georgia Tech?
Evan (08:48):
Yeah, so I've been informally working with sustainability and the SDGs for years, um, just in the urban climate lab with my research on local climate adaptation planning in my teaching, I teach courses like the sustainable city studio and urban environmental planning and design. So I've mostly been within SDG 11, sustainable cities and communities, and SLS has been just phenomenal in terms of that kind of support that they can give to integrating sustainability into my curriculum. So I've been working with them for years, but it's just in recent years that we've really been formalizing this through the Center for Teaching and Learning. So I just want to touch a little bit on what some of these workshops we've been offering have been all about. So the first one we offered was last year in the spring, we offered one that we called “think globally, teach locally.”
Carol (09:34):
And full disclosure. I, I had the privilege of working with, um, Evan and Rebecca and another colleague, um, shoved him, asked him in the Atlanta global studies center. Um, the four of us had a great time putting that workshop together.
Evan (09:48):
We did, we did. And so, yeah, this was a collaboration between the Center for Teaching and Learning, uh, through Carol and myself, and with serve, learn, sustain with Rebecca and the Atlanta Global Studies Center. And so that was wonderful. We, uh, we used that opportunity really to kind of just showcase, uh, examples of SDG curriculum integration at Georgia Tech. Um, we've had a lot of really stellar examples of early adopters among the faculty who are explicitly using the SDGs as a framework for their curriculum. So we use that workshop to really show off some of that great work. And that was really from the lesson or individual unit scale spending one day on it, up to the entire course based on it, and even at the programmatic level. And so we had such a great response. Um, there was so much more to talk about there, and a lot of will to be expanding this SDG based curriculum.
Evan(10:46):
And so just recently we offered, uh, the next iteration of that, uh, workshop, which we developed. We called it going global this time, which is more targeted as a curriculum design workshop, where really, we, we had a few examples of these different scales of SDG integration, but the majority of the workshop was really to dig into the weeds with our participants, where we, uh, had some, some breakout rooms and we really worked together to, uh, begin that first step in. How do you integrate the big ideas of the SDGs with your existing curriculum? What, what kinds of topics are you already talking about in your class that could be using the SDGs as a framework for discussion or for their assessments? And really just to give that broader context to what we're talking about in this class. And so going global was really apt name because we also, we had participants joining us from all over the world.
Evan (11:42):
We had some folks from the UK, from central and South America all across the United States. And so it was a wonderful audience. Not nearly enough time to dig into, uh, the level of depth we want it to. So I imagine that we're going to be offering some follow-ups hopefully in the near future. So I would love to see this turn into more of a learning community through things like the RCE as Rebecca mentioned, but at the very least these workshops we'll certainly continue with a broad audience and we'll see what we can do in terms of expanding this curricular integration in the SDGs at Georgia tech ad beyond
Carol(12:16):
That sounds like a really exciting workshop and already I have all these possibilities in my mind of how can we do some partnering with you to help you disseminate those materials even further. So we'll definitely keep that conversation go being even after, after this episode, you know, and so since we're, we're talking about course design, I wonder if we can back up and even just answer the fundamental question about why is it that faculty should consider bringing the SDGs into their own courses. And I want to kind of put in here at the beginning, just to shout out to the new Georgia Tech strategic plan, which actually has a whole part of it is all about connecting globally. And one of the specific goals under that area of the new strategic plan is actually names the SDGs. It says, “lead and contribute to global collaborative efforts that advance the UN sustainability, sorry, UN sustainable development goals through our education, research, and service.” You know, that's really exciting that the SDGs are being elevated at such a prominent level at Georgia Tech. And so let's talk a little bit about why, why is it so important to bring that in at the course level?
Rebecca(13:40):
There are many reasons that I think the, uh, incorporating the SDGs into courses makes a lot of sense and is something that faculty and students are, are really embracing. But I think since you've you referred to this strategic plan, I'll start by saying a little bit more about that. I was part of the team that worked on the amplify impact aspect of the strategic plan and the SDGs and relatedly, um, movement toward more cross-disciplinary or transdisciplinary and the curriculum to better equip students to address global challenges was really central to our conversations. And I'm really pleased to see how strongly the SDGs came out in the final version to give just two more examples from that section of the strategic plan. It states that Georgia Tech will strengthen the curriculum and areas that support the UN sustainable development goals, and we'll create new multidisciplinary curricular paths ways, which I think is really exciting and SLS really, it is very energized by the idea of continuing to advance collaboration across disciplines, uh, with an eye to this framework.
Rebecca (15:14):
Another one of the goals in amplify impact is to develop a regional network of collaboration's to help define problems, mobilize resources, and engage students, faculty, and staff, to amplify our impact on the sustainable human and environmental development of our local communities. So there's also that local connection and the community engagement piece embedded within the strategic plan. So the SDGs is just a great framework for helping faculty bring that to life in relation to the core concepts and skills that they need to teach in there courses. And that brings me to the, the second one. And I want to highlight is that students are asking for this, honestly, they're, they're demanding it. Uh, they want to see more relevance in their courses. And we heard this loud and clear in the 17 Zooms workshop that Georgia Tech hosted in October, the 17 Zooms, if you're not familiar with it is a virtual version of the 17 Rooms initiative, which came out of Brookings institution and Rockefeller foundation initiative to spark engagement and collective action to advance the SDGs.
Rebecca (16:39):
In each of the 17 rooms for the Georgia Tech event, we had one or two students participating, and they really shared a strong interest in seeing the SDGs integrated across the curriculum. One of the reasons that I've heard students give over and over again for wanting to see more SDGs incorporated into their core courses is to make them more relevant. Many Georgia Tech students are highly attuned to the global challenges facing us, and they really want to understand the relationships between what they're studying in the classrooms and those global challenges. So they're eager to participate in initiatives underway to address climate change, inequality, poverty, peacemaking, really all the SDGs and finding ways to integrate exploration of the SDGs with core knowledge and skills in their required courses can make that coursework much more engaging and enhance motivation and we know that that can support better learning outcomes as well as make the classes more enjoyable
Rebecca(17:54):
for faculty as well as students. So students are calling for this, they understand the importance of it. And I think the final reason I would give that I've had students who were active in the climate action movement and climate justice movement articulate this is that opportunities to engage in solutions and action is critical to their wellbeing. So many students are really feeling anxiety and even despair, and especially in the context of the pandemic, with climate change and with the many global challenges that we face. The framework of the SDGs, and particularly when examples of initiatives to address them and advance them are included in courses, students can move from that despair to a place of action and response, and that's really important for their wellbeing.
Carol (19:00):
Thank you, Rebecca. Oh, it's such a powerful set of reasons why we should consider including them in our courses. And that, that piece about students and student motivation, uh, is, is really what, what moves me most of all. I participated in the 17 Zooms initiative, along with both of you were part of it. And so many of us across, um, Georgia tech, you know, hearing from the students, just how passionate they were about so many of these issues. And we know from the literature on education, we continue to see disparities in certain fields, right? Some fields, populations that are underrepresented. And what seems to make the difference is if students can see the things that they care about being part of their work in that field, it helps to close some of those gaps. Um, and so for all those reasons that you articulated, I think there's just so, so much potential to leverage the SDGs in order to connect students at the place that they're really most engaged and most wanting to care most about. Um, and just to unleash, you know, the incredible talents that they have and, and put it together with the education that they're getting at Georgia Tech to make an impact. So I think that brings us to, to wanting to know more about some of the ways that faculty are already doing this, both of you mentioned that both been involved in initiatives, working with faculty, who've already been actively building this into their course. So I wonder if, if you might a couple of examples of the way that faculty are engaging students around the SDGs.
Evan (20:53):
So there's several different scales at which instructors at Georgia Tech have been using the SDGs. As I mentioned earlier, it tends to come either at the, the lesson or unit course, or even at the programmatic scale. And we've seen examples of all of these at Georgia Tech. And so I'll, I'll just give a few that I found particularly interesting and, you know, to start with survey abroad, uh, programmatic scale, I've been thrilled to see the engagement in our modern languages department at Georgia Tech. So this is a wonderful opportunity just like Rebecca was mentioning about this, uh, the motivation and context where some of our more advanced, modern languages courses, uh, across the program have been using the SDGs for just things to talk about in the target language. So, you know, you might have a German class where you're speaking in German, but you're speaking about the, is you're talking about both local and global challenges that come with, uh, environmental sustainability and social justice, but you're doing it in German.
Evan (21:57):
And so we've actually seen some, some pretty great engagement across the program where they're just incorporating the SDGs as topics of conversation, topics of discussion, ways to be part of the global conversation on this in a language other than English, but it's just that much more of a connection to the global issues that we're facing. So I was thrilled to see that at the core scale, we, we offer a course, um, an undergraduate course called sustainable urban development and the instructor Jairo Garcia, he actually has structured the entire course around the SDGs where every week or two was another set of SDGs, where we're talking about sustainable urban development, the challenges that come with urban populations and settings through the SDGs just each week was another, a couple of them. So there was an entire course structured around us using it as a framework to just get through all 17 as we progress through the semester.
Evan (22:52):
Um, making sure to connect these ideas back to the SDGs each time, but we've also seen a few examples where it might just be an assessment. It might just be part of say a term project. You are discussing, say econometrics, but it's with the lens of the SDGs. So the assessment may explicitly connect to the SDGs, you know, how is this or that econometric formula or concept tied to these broader global issues. And then you get together with a team. You might write a paper, you might make a poster, but it is explicitly drawing this connection between the rest of that course and the SDGs. So what is the broader context of this? What are the broader implications of the work that we've already been doing in this course? And so I found these examples to be just broadly, universally applicable. This really could show up in any course across Georgia Tech, but bringing up this question of the context of the broader context and impact. Uh, so those are some of my favorite examples. I'm sure Rebecca has, uh, some more.
Rebecca (24:00):
Those are great examples. And I think, uh, you did a great job of enough of highlighting some, you know, unit level versus course level and programmatic integration, I guess I would just add, um, to say a little bit more about, uh, the context of the sustainable urban development course that you mentioned in the studio that you've taught in the past is that they're part of the sustainable cities minor, which is a collaboration between serve, learn, sustain, and the school of city and regional planning. And because both of the core courses, the sustainable urban development course, and the studio course are both framed by the SDGs, the SDGs are really now framing that entire minor, uh, which is really exciting because all of the students who move through that minor take both of those core courses. To give another specific example, the studio course that's part of the minor worked with the Grove Park neighborhood association last semester to develop a plan for better connecting different aspects of the neighborhood, to the Bankhead Marta station and for each component, economics, social and environmental of the plan that they developed in collaboration with the neighborhood association, the students made connections to the relevant SDGs and brought that into their analysis and their discussion.
Rebecca (25:40):
So, yeah, it really is. Uh, we're beginning to see it in both in courses where, where you would expect to like sustainable urban development and it as, as Evan noted where you might not expect it at all like modern languages and economics.
Carol (26:01):
Rebecca, you know, that makes me want to ask about, I know one of your roles at SLS is connecting faculty with community organizations and to form partnerships related to courses or other work that they're doing. And I wonder if you might talk a little bit about the possibilities for faculty who are interested in developing that kind of, of course, related to the SDGs.
Rebecca (26:26):
That's a great question. And actually at the workshop that Evan described that, that we facilitated just a few days ago, one of the faculty examples, uh, that we presented to the group was a community SDG integrated example, and also a collaboration between Spelman College and Georgia State University. So, you know, that, that definitely is another significant advantage of, of using the SDGs as a framework and making connections between, uh, local issues and global challenges. In the example that Richard Milligan at Georgia State and Na’Taki Osbourne Jelks at Spelman College gave in the workshop, they were looking at, uh, clean water and sanitation, um, inequality and, uh, several other SDGs and incorporating them into a water quality monitoring initiative that was connected to their courses. So it's definitely, there are definitely great opportunities to do both within the same course. And I think in with, uh, projects and topics where local and global can, can both be incorporated, those are particularly strong opportunities to incorporate both community engagement with one of the partners that SLS works with on a regular basis and bring in the SDGs. And we are always very, very happy to work with faculty to, to brainstorm ideas for, uh, what organization might be inappropriate partner, what kind, which of the SDGs might, uh, make most sense in terms of alignment with their existing syllabus and so forth.
Carol(28:41):
That's great. And we'll definitely have your contact information as part of this, the show notes for this episode. So, or we can even just head over to the SLS website and easily find Rebecca's email address, um, in case you're interested in developing that kind of, of course, and, and looking for an opportunity to partner within the community. We spoke earlier about, started to speak earlier about students as a, uh, you know, powerful motivation for why, um, we should teach these kinds of courses. I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about the type of impact that we're seeing on students, including the SDGs as part of their education.
Evan(29:27):
I think the SDGs are particularly useful as a curricular framework to answer that perpetual question that students have of, why am I learning this? Why should I care about this? And Rebecca mentioned earlier that the students who are always asking for the broader context and impact. They need that kind of motivation in order to enthusiastically pursue this material, this line of work, their major, uh, and eventually their career. And so I think that the SDGs are particularly powerful to bring into the classroom, to be able to talk about the broader impact of the work that they're already doing, to raise these kinds of global and local challenges that are presented in, in a particular field that could be addressed through the work that the current and ongoing and future work of these particular students. We graduate thousands of potential change makers at Georgia Tech every year. With the SDGs in mind, this kind of broader context of just what kind of impact they could have. It can really help set career goals, can really help motivate these students to want to make a change, to understand their potential impact, to know the power that they have coming out of Georgia Tech to make a difference in these, to help improve, uh, the global condition, um, for sustainability and social justice.
Evan(30:53):
And so I think it has a really big impact on that. And we've seen that in these students, not just in giving really good feedback on these courses that have included the SDGs, but seeing their involvement there, just how eager they are to participate in the conversation about advancing the SDGs outside of their coursework. We've talked a little bit about the 17 Zooms event that did have great student involvement. The students were very engaged in that conversation. They were asking for more SDG involvement in their coursework at Georgia Tech. And so the fact that they're motivated to talk about this, that they're, you know, they're willing to give up what little time they have to participate in this discussion about how do we see more of this at Georgia Tech? I think really speaks volumes about the impact that it can have in terms of their motivation to want to get involved. So that's a lot of what I've seen. I'm curious to hear what Rebecca might say from the SLS perspective of what you've seen in terms of impact on the students.
Rebecca (31:51):
Yeah, it absolutely, in terms of motivation, it's, it's really key and I'm only seeing more and more interest in engagement these days. I think particularly with all of the demonstrations surrounding racial violence and racial injustice last summer, there was a tremendous response from Georgia Tech students, similarly, um, many understand how the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequality and students are very motivated to get involved. You know, an additional key aspect of using the SDGs as a framework and a piece that I mentioned I was really encouraged to see in the strategic plan is cross-disciplinarity. And I think that's critically important because students want to understand how to contribute to social change. And that's not a technological question; that really requires knowledge and understanding and skills from many different disciplines to understand that and the historical standing as well. I was in a conference just a couple of days ago, um, where a woman named Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, who is a Marine biologist and a climate justice advocate said, “we confuse tools with solutions”.
Rebecca (33:36):
And I think that's a very powerful statement. She gave us an example, electric vehicles, you know, electric vehicles are a really important technology for addressing climate change, but they're not meaningful without the right policies in place without the right infrastructure in place, without addressing questions of access and equity: who can buy them, who can use them, where can they be used? And our students, um, tend to get a really stellar technological training. They're really well-versed in the tools, but they also want to understand solutions and know how to craft solutions, uh, in order to support students and the way that they want to be supported, that process disciplinarity or trans-disciplinarity, whichever term you want to use, that is really critical to advancing our ability to effectively use the SDGs as a framework, and really equip our students to be change makers in the way that, that we say we do.
Carol (34:56):
Both of you are bringing up such powerful impacts on students and, um, such a tremendous opportunity. You know, as we said before, the students are hungry for this. Their technological education is outstanding and putting it together with these broader understandings, you know, can just empower them to graduate thing, having you call them potential change agents, I, I, I think they, they definitely see themselves that way and we want to help set them up for that kind of success. So I wonder if faculty are new to the SDGs, they're wanting to learn more, what are some resources available to them to take the next step and think about how they might include these perspectives in their courses?
Rebecca (35:55):
Well, one of the things that we did is as part of the recent workshop, was compile resources in order to be able to support faculty who may be new to the SDGs, or may understand what the SDGs are, but perhaps not see how they might be relevant to their courses. We've mentioned a couple of times that, you know, Georgia Tech is not alone, thankfully, and really wanting to advance integration of the SDGs and advance the role of higher education and leading a work that advances the SDGs. So thankfully there are a growing number of resources that include, for example, big ideas and learning objectives for each of the 17 SDGs. So those are the kinds of resources that we've pulled together into a list that, that we make available to workshop participants and have also been compiling those sorts of resources within the teaching toolkit of SLS.
Rebecca (37:10):
So I would be very happy to, to meet one-on-one with any of our faculty that are interested in learning more, and we're not able to take advantage of those workshops. The other thing that, um, I'm constantly encouraging faculty to do is identify a way to get involved in the RCE. Since the RCE Greater Atlanta is explicitly about advancing the SDGs collaboratively and growing a network that can make all of our work more effective by sharing resources, sharing ideas, collaborating on things like this workshop, I would love to connect faculty and help them find a place where they're really interested in plugging in with the RCE.
Carol (38:05):
Okay, great! And there's any links. Um, we already said we've linked to the toolkit. If the, if the RCE has a website, um, whatever kinds of things that are currently available on the web, we'll be happy to link to them from the show notes here. And, and thank you for making yourself available to, to meet with people. One-on-one for those who want to go even deeper. Well, this, this was a great conversation. I really appreciate you both taking the time to come on here and sharing your work and sharing some of your thoughts with our colleagues at Georgia Tech, about how they might incorporate the SDGs into their courses. And some of the powerful reasons there is to do that. So thank you so much.
Rebecca and Evan (38:53):
Thank you. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having us.
Carol(38:58):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Teaching and Learning Buzz, a podcast of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Georgia Tech. The show notes and the transcript for this episode are available at ctl.gatech.edu/tlbuzz, and check back regularly. We are putting out new episodes, bonus clips and other resources. And if you have another topic that you'd like us to explore, let us know you can reach us at ctlhelp@gatech.edu.