Sustainability Teaching Toolkit
What is Sustainability?
Sustainability is a multifaceted and interdisciplinary effort that requires the engagement of all epistemologies and methodologies. In keeping with the University of Illinois Chicago’s commitment to providing Transformative Scholarship in sustainability teaching and learning, this toolkit is designed to provide a basic introduction to best practices in sustainability education as well as a wide range of approaches, programs, resources, and examples.
Please take some time to consider the tools available here and remember that there is already a robust community of sustainability educators at UIC who are available to support and encourage your journey in sustainability teaching.
Learn more about UIC’s Teaching Sustainability Initiative Course
Building Blocks for Teaching Sustainability
Sustainability-Focused Open Education Resources
A selection of open source resources to consider for classroom use.
Open Access Resources
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UIC Library: Open Educational Resources
Appropedia
Appropedia is a wiki for original research on sustainable development.
MERLOT
MERLOT is a curated collection of free and open online resources for teaching, learning, and faculty development, contributed to and utilized by a global educational community.
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The National Academies Press (NAP): Environment and Environmental Studies This resource provides textbooks on various environmental studies topics. All of the books on the National Academies Press site are available as freely downloadable PDFs.
OAPEN – Environmentalist Thought & Ideology
Both a collection of open access publications and a publishing platform with a focus on social sciences and humanities.
Open Book Publishers
UK publisher that provides free online access and low cost formatted and print access to titles with a special emphasis on humanities, digital humanities, and social sciences.
Open Access Sustainability Textbooks
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Böhm and Sullivan, Negotiating Climate Change in Crisis
This textbook critically evaluates the ineffective global climate change negotiations over three decades. It includes twenty-eight essays by scholars and activists, analyzing the failures in climate action. The book covers seven themes: paradigms, metrics, extraction, frontline experiences, governance, finance, and strategies. It offers both broad overviews and detailed case studies, questioning our approach to the climate crisis. Essential for environmental and social scientists, it provides insights into the climate crisis debate for general readers.
Carls, Twenty-First Century World: Crises and Solutions
The 21st Century World: Crises and Solutions, aims to remedy a scarcity of comprehensive analysis of world events. It recollects the recent past, analyzes the factors that destabilize and threaten human life, and examines sustainable and fair solutions. The chapters are organized in four parts: sustainability, demographics, literacy, and freedoms. Coverage includes the sustainability of land and water use, poverty-induced issues such as health, hunger, and homelessness, the global economy, population distribution and location, migrations and refugees, education and information and issues of violence that find outlets in oppression, protests, war, and terrorism.
Grenshaw, Climate Toolkit: A Resource Manual for Science and Action
This textbook is a practical guide for understanding climate change science and developing personal insights. It includes a variety of activities utilizing online resources such as climate models, data archives, and policy documents. The manual encourages independent research and perspective-building, rather than rote learning. It is organized into five sections: fundamentals of weather and climate, current and past climate impacts, future changes, and mitigation and adaptation strategies. Additionally, it offers appendices listing online tools and resources, and background on climate negotiations. Initially for undergraduate non-science majors, it now serves a broader audience, including community groups and various organizations.
Harris, Introduction to Environmental Sciences and Sustainability
This textbook is a college-level Open Educational Resource (OER) that focuses on the most relevant environmental science issues and addresses ways to incorporate sustainable practices. This resource is targeted at environmental science students.
Hosmanek et. al., Business Law, Ethics, and Sustainability
This textbook is for undergraduate law courses and it covers business law topics such as contracts, business organizations, employment law, and torts, as well as a general survey of American law. Additional topics include Constitutional law, civil rights, environmental law, criminal law, and litigation.
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Ibrahim and Denison, Connecting Sustainable Cities for the Future
This sustainability in engineering course/textbook focuses on decision-making. It starts with defining sustainability and covers both its theoretical aspects and practical applications. Students learn through qualitative concepts and quantitative models, using core engineering methods for sustainability issues. Topics include air and water quality, energy, and waste management, with a focus on sustainable urban systems globally. The course emphasizes the triple bottom line and its relevance to sustainable cities. A key project involves students contributing to an e-book, applying course concepts to chosen cities and exploring global sustainability challenges, solutions, and technologies. This project links learning to the Sustainability Development Goals and the Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges.
Larson, Sustainability, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
This textbook is suited for Entrepreneurship or Innovation courses with a focus on Sustainability. It examines how the shift towards sustainable development impacts business and entrepreneurial opportunities, emphasizing the “triple bottom line” approach that balances economic, social, and environmental factors. The book highlights how sustainability aids in strategic differentiation, risk management, and competitive advantage, reflecting its increasing importance in global business practices and thought. It provides a thorough overview of the necessity and development of sustainability in the modern entrepreneurial landscape.
Theis and Tomkin, Sustainability: A Comprehensive Foundation
This text introduces key sustainability concepts, crucial for long-term global welfare, and fills a gap in college textbooks. It’s ideal for both general introductory classes and as a supplementary resource for specialized courses. Covering various topics uniformly, it includes glossaries, questions, case studies, and resource links, making it a comprehensive semester course resource. Students will learn sustainability’s language and concepts, preparing them for advanced studies in sustainable planning, policy, economics, climate, ecology, and infrastructure.
Weder and Eriksen, CSR Communication and Cultures of Sustainability
This introductory book on CSR and Sustainability Communication discusses the evolution of the sustainability story in corporate, political, and environmental discourses as well as paradigms and theoretical approaches to better understand communication about, of and for sustainability. The textbook follows a strategic communication perspective and offers practical examples and exercises for making sustainability and related issues accessible and comprehensible, for co-creating social change.
Data
Resources for local, national, and global data related to sustainability.
Data Resources
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CAIP Data Portal
A data dashboard illustrating the SMART goals of UIC’s CAIP solutions
Chicago Data Portal: Environment
The City of Chicago’s open data portal lets you find city data, lets you find facts about your neighborhood, lets you create maps and graphs about the city, and lets you freely download the data for your own analysis.
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EPA Data Portal
This site can be used as a landing page to explore and interact with EPA data resources. You can find data by topic or location, interact with those data in web-based applications, understand how EPA uses data, and see how you can use those data too.
UN SDG Indicators Database
SDG Global Database gives you access to data on more than 210 SDG indicators for countries across the globe by indicator, country, region or time period.
Place-Based and Project-Based Learning
Engaging students in the field of sustainability solutions with hands-on learning experiences.
Sustainability Internship Program
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Undergraduate students work to help UIC improve social, economic, and environmental sustainability.
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The Sustainability Internship Program (SIP) provides an intellectual framework for students to apply classroom learning to project-based engagement.
Freshwater Lab Internship
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The Freshwater Lab Internship course is open to advanced undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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It focuses on water, along with environmental justice, critique of investment and consumption patterns, and natural resource governance.
Heritage Garden Internship
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The Heritage Garden project frame work uses an assets-based approach that recognizes the range of green practices that people are already doing.
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The project builds on cultural values and identity, and links community concerns with environmental issues.
Sustainability Terminology for the Classroom
Consult these resources as a starting point for the basics on sustainability.
CDP: Global Disclosure System
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The Climate Disclosure Project, a global third-party ESG reporting system has compiled a list of definitions in an effort to demystify the words and phrases you might encounter in the field of sustainability.
Sustainable Business Network
Sustainable Business Network
The Sustainable Business Network (New Zealand) has compiled a helpful and inclusive list of common terms.