Determining the ‘Essentials’ for an Undergraduate Sustainability Degree Program

Abstract

Fostering a deep understanding of sustainability in students is critical in order to create a new generation of leaders. Universities have a significant role to play in this endeavour. Dalhousie University has recently developed the Environment, Sustainability and Society (ESS) program, which gives students the opportunity to study sustainability from a multitude of lenses. Faculty in the program had the unique opportunity to build the curriculum from the ground up. The Delphi technique was one of many tools used in the development of the curriculum for the program. This paper reports on the Delphi study which aimed to achieve consensus among the core faculty of the ESS program on the key knowledge, concepts, dispositions and skills that students should acquire to graduate from an undergraduate sustainability program. The results is a list of 59 items (knowledge n = 13, concepts n = 14, skills n = 15, and dispositions n = 17) ranked as highly important for inclusion in the ESS curriculum.

Curriculum development; Delphi Technique; higher education; university; sustainability degree