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The Learning City
Project File : British Columbia
University of British Columbia
Partnering
- Volunteer sustainability coordinator program
- Sustainability circles
- Sustainability of UBC food System Collaborative Project
Designing
- ELECTrek
- ECOTrek
- Upass
Teaching
- Interfaculty Program in Sustainability Studies
- Land, Food and Community program
Sustainability at UBC
The University of British Columbia is a large research university, with over 35,000 students, 1,700 faculty and 7,300 staff. The university's commitment to sustainability was formalized in the university Sustainable Development Policy in 1997 which states “that the campus should adhere to sustainable practices in all of its actions and mandates” and that “all students who attend UBC should be educated about sustainability” (Moore et al. 2004). Using the institution's Trek 2000 vision statement as a guide for addressing the ‘Place,' ‘People,' and ‘Process' elements of sustainability, UBC now phrases its responsibility and commitment this way:
UBC is committed to providing a nurturing environment for our People and conserving the natural bounty of our Place, all while following an open and transparent decision-making Process that involves the entire campus population. Sustainability can be said to be functioning at an optimal level when decisions are informed and guided by equal measure of ecology, economy and society.
(Campus Sustainability Office 2003)
In other words, UBC has begun the challenge of integrating the many diverse efforts on campus toward some aspect of sustainability in order to pursue strategic change. Many sustainability projects are ongoing at UBC. Information about projects not mentioned can be found at www.sustain.ubc.ca, www.agsci.ubc.ca, www.science.ubc.ca/envsc, www.rmes.ubc.ca, www.ires.ubc.ca and www.scarp.ubc.ca. This profile limits itself to a discussion of the following initiatives: the Campus Sustainability Office, the Interfaculty Program in Sustainability Studies, and the Land, Food and Community course series in the Agriculture Faculty.
Campus Sustainability Office (www.sustain.ubc.ca)
The CSO, established in 1998 to implement the Sustainable Development policy, coordinates planning, design and operations for sustainability on campus and helps coordinate staff, faculty, and student education as well. The CSO vision puts a twist on the classic Brundtland definition of sustainable development, giving future generations the power to judge: “To earn the respect of future generations for the ecological, social and economic legacy we create.” (CSO 2003) In 2003, after a number of incremental projects to reduce energy and water consumption on campus, UBC began ECOTREK - a sweeping three year energy and water retrofit with new power saving technology. ECOTREK aims to reduce thousands of tonnes of CO2 emissions, to reduce energy consumption by 20%, and to save the campus $2.5 million annually. In addition to helping CSO meet its budget, savings from ECOTrek helps reduce the “debt clock” of UBC's deferred maintenance costs.
Various other initiatives help comprise the climate change reduction strategy at CSO. The office works with the Waste Management Department to reduce the solid waste sent to landfill, and with the Health, Safety and Environment and Utilities Department to reduce NOX emissions on campus. UBC (along with SFU) began a Universal Transit Pass (UPass) bus pass system to encourage student bus travel. Through the volunteer sustainability coordinator program, campus-wide volunteers agree to be trained in ways to reduce personal energy consumption. They also commit to spending two to four hours per month, during work time, to challenge and inspire their colleagues to make positive changes in energy use, waste generation, and transportation alternatives. The program has been growing in popularity, with 125 participants in 2002. As an incentive for participation, SCO began offering a $75,000 sustainability grant to departments with sustainability coordinators.
UBC sustainability circles attempt to create “social change by starting a conversation.” These occasional university-wide discussion circles on sustainability-related topics bring together ideas for responding to persistent problems and means for participants to form new connections and relationships. One outcome of the sustainability circles has been a social sustainability task force, working for international outreach on sustainability issues and advancing sustainability education at UBC.
CSO has a full-time staff of three: a director, an energy manager and a communications manager, plus three part-time staff. The office makes its annual budget entirely through eco-efficiency cost savings. ELECTrek, the building retrofit precursor to ECOTrek, for example, cost $6.5 million but now saves UBC $600,000 per year. Natural Resources Canada has supplemented CSO funding on projects and BC Hydro has been a major partner on numerous initiatives.
On the road to systematizing not just eco-efficiency but teaching for sustainability as well, one of CSO's next projects is to develop a set of indicators with which to assess the sustainability content of courses university-wide. This is a daunting challenge, but one in which the office has some substantial partners in the other student research and teaching-specific sustainability initiatives on campus, discussed below.
Interfaculty Program in Sustainability Studies
Currently in pilot phase, this program has been proposed by George Spiegelman, Janet Moore and Rob VanWynsberghe. It aims to offer a four-year ‘Bachelor of Arts and Science' degree with a focus on sustainability, global citizenship, and ecological and social justice. Although some courses throughout UBC currently focus on sustainability, this program would be the first transdisciplinary opportunity for students to earn a broad-based degree immersed in sustainability studies.
The pilot course currently offered, “Awareness and Action: Focus on Urban Sustainability,” ran for the second time in summer 2004 based not at the UBC campus but at Science World and the Great Northern Way Campus just outside of downtown Vancouver. Bicycles are required for the course, which currently involves participatory, community-based research into the ongoing Central Valley Greenway Project, a corridor of protected open space running from Vancouver to its eastern suburbs (http://www.basinfutures.net/urbancourse 
). Future core course titles include “Seminar on Interdisciplinarity,” “Sustainability: The British Columbia Focus,” and “Global Citizenship". Each has either an experiential or service learning component. Epistomology and methodology courses, Sustainability Field Courses and exchange programs in sustainability research are also in the works.
The program views involved faculty members as “co-learners in this important discussion about our collective future.” Courses will be team taught by two faculty members and developed with the help of teaching assistants and through additional consultation with experts in community service learning and inquiry-based learning. In addition, program start-up will be coordinated with a five-year research project, led by core program faculty, to monitor and assess the program's initial outcomes.
Land, Food and Community in The Agricultural Sciences Faculty
Over the past six years, UBC's Faculty of Agricultural Sciences has undergone a profound change in core values, curriculum, and pedagogy. As an outcome, the faculty has a new central focus on food policy, food security, and sustainable food systems. This change has redoubled sustainability efforts at the UBC farm, Centre for Landscape Research, Master of Landscape Architecture Program, and Global Resource Systems. In addition, a series of three core courses has been developed: the Land, Food and Community series. Their aim is to give students a solid understanding of the ecological, social and economic sustainability of food systems at all levels.
A capstone fourth-year project within this series, established in 2001, is a community-based action research project: the Sustainability of UBC food system Collaborative Project. Now in its third year, the course-project is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving the UBC Campus Sustainability Office; Social, Economic and Ecological Development Studies; the Alma Matter Student Society Food Services; UBC Food Services; UBC Waste Management and UBC Farm. The course uses a “community-of-learners” and “problem-based learning” model to investigate food system sustainability at different scales.
The overall vision for this project, although still in development, includes a vision for community-based action research, reaching beyond UBC for partners, and no less than a transformation of the campus's entire food system, serving the university's 35,000 student body and 9,140 full-time staff and faculty. Project success might be measured in terms of the support received at the UBC farm and UBC food services, the degree of relocalization of the UBC food system, and a reduction in the UBC ‘food'print. Faculty-wide curriculum changes aim for interdisciplinary integration of knowledge and its application to real problems; understanding the importance of different paradigms and theories of knowledge in addressing problems; ethical sensitivity; revaluing social and ecological responsibility; the ability to work in teams; validating personal experiences, interests and ideals; critical and creative thinking; and unleashing passions to learn and integrate knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries.
The course has been popular with students, who rank it higher than average for an elective course. The collaborative and iterative approach to course design has improved the quality of partnerships at UBC and opened avenues for future collaboration. Project leader Professor Alejandro Rojas also says of the project's results: “We can say with some assurance that our students now know how to design an evaluation of the sustainability of the food system of a complex institution like UBC and have tools to articulate a vision of a sustainable system and strategies for the transition towards it which recognize barriers and opportunities to achieve those goals.”
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Website: www.sustain.ubc.ca
Sources: Alejandro Rojas, Professor in Agroecology Program, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, UBC, interview 23 February 2004, Janet Moore, Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies UBC, and Rob VanWynsberghe, Assistant Professor in the Institute for Health Promotion Research UBC.
Designwest
Partnering
- Creating a collaborative space for diverse design professionals to tackle Sustainable Community
Serving
- The Design Centre in the downtown eastside will address the special design needs of residents
Designing
- Will meld classroom space, meeting space, and collaborative design research space
Society for the Promotion of Design & Innovation in BC
DesignWest is a Vancouver-based volunteer consortium of design aficionados. They include engineers, architects, urban planners, apparel and digital designers, graphic designers, set and theatre designers, and all are interested in promoting the social and environmental value of good design. Together, they are about twenty volunteers with a certain amount of time and almost no funding, but an explosion of ideas for using design to serve sustainable purposes. One problem they're addressing is that people in their diverse professions don't often have a locus to meet, discuss and integrate ideas, and work together. To fill this gap, DesignWest is creating a Vancouver Design Centre. Design Centres exist in other cities, and at their best, like Britain's Design Centre, serve as much more than places to display objects. The Vancouver Design Centre will also be an opportunity to bring design skills to the ground of community planning and action and create design-based results for the sustainable city.
One of the Design Centre's banner projects is called Sustainable Community Design. This effort takes on four big issues: housing and homelessness, youth at risk, literacy and health, and sustainable economies. It aims to tackle all these issues by creating space on the downtown east side to meld academic classes and professional meetings, service learning and collaborative design research with the downtown eastside community. Partners include the UBC Institute of Health Promotion Research and Faculty of Medicine and nonprofit groups like United We Can, the Britannia Community Center, and Ecotrust. United We Can has successfully created lasting employment for Downtown Eastside residents through a recycling program, bottle depot, neighbourhood cleaning initiatives, and bicycle repair and sales services. Taking a “conservation economy” approach, EcoTrust specializes in sustainable community economic development and the revitalization of resource-based communities. Additional future partners are on the horizon, as are potential sites for the space. Andrew Hamilton, who volunteers with DesignWest, wants to ensure the organization has a strong foundation before settling into any particular building. Whether it is a question of locating temporarily or establishing full-time, however, DesignWest is committed to having a centre in place in 2004.
A new teaching model for the program has been proposed by a partner from UBC's Institute of Health Promotion Research, Rob VanWynsberghe. This teaching model is called “Promoting Lasting Attachments to Community and Environment” or PLACE. The model features community service learning. Drawing upon this engaged approach to learning, the model aims to contribute to public policy, flowing from hands-on research and direct consultation with neighbourhood residents. The model puts a particular emphasis on the non-medical determinants of health.
The teaching model fits into key aspects of the project, which involve congregating and building on the intellectual capacity of design professionals in the city to create the foundation of knowledge such that, when important design issues arise, consensus-based answers will emerge. In part, this intellectual capacity will grow from the ability to listen to and learn from people with special design needs, such as residents of the downtown eastside for example, people who need social housing that actually works to improve community disfunction, illiterate people who need understandable labels on their medication, people with addictions who need safeguards against double use of hypodermic needles. PLACE is the venue for medical and social science students who aim to work with at risk and poor populations to relate to these populations, increasing understanding and opportunities for empowerment on all sides.
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Source: Andrew Hamilton, DesignWest volunteer, interview 17 February 2004.
Nicola Valley Institute of Technology
Partnering
- Transfer opportunities with public universities, collaboration with government and First Nations agencies
Serving
- NVIT has a mainly First Nations staff and serves a student body that is 84% First Nations
Designing
- New cold climate green building also relfects traditional First Nations design
Teaching
- Curricula in wellness, governance, land and economic development, enhanced by unique First Nations values
Nicola Valley Institute of Technology
Located in Merritt, British Columbia, NVIT opened its doors as a publicly-funded, Aboriginal-governed, accredited post-secondary Provincial Institute in 1995. The institute was conceived in 1983 by the Coldwater, Shackan, Nooaitch, Upper Nicola, and Lower Nicola Bands of the Nicola Valley, with three instructors and thirteen students. Since its private beginnings, the campus has grown to span 4,519 square metres and features six programs and over 230 students, 84% of them First Nations. In 2001, construction of an award-winning “cold climate green building” was completed. The building was designed by Alfred Waugh in collaboration with First Nations to reflect many traditional design elements.
The institute provides quality post-secondary education to its First Nations student body in the fields of Wellness, Governance, Land, and Economic Development, all in an environment that promotes traditional ways. These fields are specific to the First Nations view of relevant and innovative credentials that will enable students to advance and pursue sustainable development. Promoting traditional ways in post-secondary education is what makes NVIT distinctive and gives the institute its sustainability focus. For instance, at NVIT: institutional governance lies with First Nations; educational programs and services reflect Aboriginal perspectives, values, and beliefs; elders are on campus to guide and support staff and students; the majority of staff is Aboriginal; free expression and practice of Aboriginal values and ways are encouraged; and programs may be delivered in communities. According to Verna Minnabarriet, Dean of Academic Affairs, “NVIT believes in a holistic approach to education whereby the students' knowledge base is enhanced by those values unique to First Nations culture.”
NVIT collaborates with a range of Aboriginal and governmental groups, as well as with public institutions. Students can transfer between major public universities in the province and can receive an Aboriginal Community Economic Development degree in conjunction with Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Social Work degree in conjunction with the University College of the Cariboo. Among the groups in collaboration with NVIT are: the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers (CANDO), First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC), Indigenous Adult & Higher Learning Association (IAHLA), National Association of Indigenous Institutes of Higher Learning (NAIIHL), and both provincial and federal government organizations and ministries.
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Website: www.nvit.bc.ca
Source: Verna Minnabarriet, Dean of Academic Affairs, interview 17 March 2004.
Royal Roads University
Partnering
• E-dialogues stimulate debate by diverse groups around sustainable development issues
Serving
- Promotes greater access to expert information for nonexperts and dispersed groups
Teaching
- E-classrooms are linked to the curriculum and graduate research
E-Dialogues for Sustainable Development
Royal Roads University (RRU) in Victoria was established as a provincial university in 1995 around four central themes: entrepreneurship and management; leadership; environmental sustainability; and conflict resolution. RRU's commitment to the highest sustainability standards is spelled out by the university's environmental stewardship policy and in a campus-wide environmental management system designed to improve the quality of the physical environment on campus, reduce impacts on the surrounding environment and contribute solutions to regional and global environmental concerns.
One of RRU's most innovative projects is called E-Dialogues for Sustainable Development. This project began in 2001 as a collaboration between RRU, the Government of Canada's Policy Research Initiative and the Public Policy Forum, an independent public policy research and dialogue centre. E-dialogues are a series of real-time electronic dialogues to stimulate public policy discussion among diverse sectors of Canadian society around critical sustainable development issues. The project will use and evaluate the e-dialogue media as a tool to change and enhance literacy around specific sustainable development issues and to determine whether substantive dialogues outside policy circles can inform the policy process.
The e-dialogues have a dual purpose. They are both a tool for data collection and a means to bring experts from across the country into the e-classroom. One type of e-classroom is used by policy makers, researchers, business leaders and young scholars and is linked to the curriculum and to graduate research. This group covers a wide range of sustainability topics such as Leadership and Sustainable Development, Social Capital, Climate Change, Eco-modelling, Sustainable Community Development, Cosmology and Education, and Spirituality and Sustainable Development. A second type of e-classroom engages a public forum focused on post-Kyoto Accord climate change dialogues, investigating general information, the role of business, governing, and leadership. This public forum has been led by four experts and attracted over 6000 participants.
The key innovation in this project is in its exploration of the possibilities of information communications technology for dialogue and life-long learning. The e-dialogues are actively moderated by experts from the field and integrate interdisciplinary research opportunities and on-line dialogue experiences. One key finding to date is that Canadians may be very interested in policy issues but often are excluded from contributing to decisions because they don't know enough about issues, or can't access existing information. Canadians want to be informed but need access to expert information as well as forums for discussion. The e-dialogues project works to provide the wider public with access to expertise regardless of where a particular community is located and helps create new communities of interest that extend beyond the university classroom and beyond geographic limits.
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Website: www.e-researchagenda.ca
Source: Ann Dale, Professor in Science, Technology and Environment Division, Royal Roads University, interview 4 February, 2004.
Simon Fraser University
Partnering
- Lasting partnerships exist around forest-based communities, with international partners in Mexico and the Ukraine, and throughout the sustainable and community economic development sectors
Serving
- Successful service projects include the Cooperative Auto Network, a student project that now has 1450 members, over 80 vehicles and operates in nine BC communities
Teaching
- Offers undergraduate, graduate, and professional courses
Centre for Sustainable Community Development
Simon Fraser University (SFU) has a range of teaching, training and research activities related to sustainability. The Urban Studies Program (www.sfu.ca/urban) offers graduate courses in urban sustainable development. The Centre for Coastal Studies (www.sfu.ca/coastalstudies ) is a collaborative research centre that links social and natural science with local knowledge by focussing on the themes of marine conservation, sustainable coastal communities and economies and building resource management capacity (government, community, academic). The Learning Strategies Group (www.learningstrategies.ca), part of the Faculty of Business Administration, focuses on the educational and training needs of BC businesses in response to sustainable development. The SFU Community Trust (UniverCity.ca) is developing a sustainable residential community for up to 10,000 residents adjoining the main SFU campus. Finally, the Centre for Sustainable Community Development, has been working to encourage accountable, sustainable and appropriate community economic development (CED) in BC since it was founded in 1989 as the Community Economic Development Centre.
The goal of the CSCD is to provide research, training and advisory services to the sustainability sector in British Columbia and elsewhere, to stimulate the study and process of community sustainable development through academic programs in the classroom and via distance education, to collect and disseminate information about CSD, to partner on projects with communities and agencies, to respond to requests for assistance on CSD problems, to create professional development opportunities and programs for CSD practitioners and to establish working relations with similar centres internationally.
The Centre is actively involved in community-based projects throughout the province and offers an undergraduate certificate and a post-baccalaureate diploma in community economic development (both are also available through distance education), graduate study, and a Professional CED Certificate Program. The academic requirements include a course on “Sustainable CED” and electives like “Sustainable Enterprise Development.” Required professional program courses include “Developing Sustainable Communities.” The Centre is also the BC Regional Coordinator of the national CED Technical Assistance Program (CEDTAP), based at Carleton University in Ottawa and funded by the McConnell Foundation. The Centre also works with a variety of international partners; major projects are currently underway in Mexico and Ukraine.
In December of 2003, the CEDC Steering Committee resolved to change the Centre's name to the Centre for Sustainable Community Development (CSCD). The CSCD will enhance the reach and relevancy of the university in sustainable development. SFU has several internationally acclaimed faculty and staff with expertise in sustainable development. However, these individuals are dispersed across the university and lack any formal institutional linkages or integrative resources. The transformation from the CEDC to the new Centre for Sustainable Community Development represents an ideal organizational unit in which to house a new sustainability emphasis within the university.
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Website: www.sfu.ca/cscd
Source: Mark Roseland, Director of the Centre for Sustainability Community Development, interview 12 March 2004.