TY - JOUR
T1 - Educating Students in Real-world Sustainability Research
T2 - Vision and Implementation
AU - Brundiers, Katja
AU - Wiek, Arnim
N1 - Funding Information:
We used this scheme to evaluate two representative projects of the Seed Sustainability initiative at ETH Zürich. In accord with the goals and procedures of this initiatives, both projects promoted collaboration among students, professors, and practitioners. The introductory meeting of each project team, which consists of students, their professors, and stakeholders, focuses upon joint problem identification and framing of the overall research question. The topics for students’ master’s and bachelor’s theses arise from this discussion. At the final meeting team members consolidate results, review the solutions, and discuss how they will be implemented, and evaluate collaboration. Participants are jointly responsible for funding the project. As academic mentoring is part of the faculty member’s responsibility, the supervising professor provides time in-kind paid for by the university. A grant from ETH Zürich covers the fixed costs of Seed Sustainability, e.g., for office space, web site, and administration. Practitioners pay Seed Sustainability for the TIM’s project facilitation. There are no costs for students.
PY - 2011/4
Y1 - 2011/4
N2 - Readers are invited to imagine students helping to solve real-world sustainability problems brought to them by societal stakeholders and simultaneously learning about and contributing to sustainable changes in society. Effective sustainability research education engages students in just that. Higher education institutions are implementing this vision of education in entire curricula, individual courses, and extracurricular research activities. In this article, we build on the literature to describe a vision of sustainability research education and present an evaluative scheme for measuring its effectiveness. We apply the scheme to two sustainability research-education projects in Switzerland to test its applicability and to identify achievements of the projects and the areas where improvement is needed. Areas for improvement include collaboration between academics and practitioners, joint problem definition, and the guidance of students to participate successfully in collaborative, real-world projects.
AB - Readers are invited to imagine students helping to solve real-world sustainability problems brought to them by societal stakeholders and simultaneously learning about and contributing to sustainable changes in society. Effective sustainability research education engages students in just that. Higher education institutions are implementing this vision of education in entire curricula, individual courses, and extracurricular research activities. In this article, we build on the literature to describe a vision of sustainability research education and present an evaluative scheme for measuring its effectiveness. We apply the scheme to two sustainability research-education projects in Switzerland to test its applicability and to identify achievements of the projects and the areas where improvement is needed. Areas for improvement include collaboration between academics and practitioners, joint problem definition, and the guidance of students to participate successfully in collaborative, real-world projects.
KW - Evaluation
KW - Interface management
KW - Participatory research
KW - Sustainability research education
KW - Transformative learning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=79952185438&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=79952185438&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10755-010-9161-9
DO - 10.1007/s10755-010-9161-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79952185438
SN - 0742-5627
VL - 36
SP - 107
EP - 124
JO - Innovative Higher Education
JF - Innovative Higher Education
IS - 2
ER -