Gary Ellem

The Low Carbon Curriculum at the University of Newcastle, Australia

The University of Newcastle, Australia, has developed a vision and goals for sustainability practice in its Strategic and Environmental Sustainability Plans for which an operating framework and procedures need to be developed. In this paper we develop our institution’s strategy for sustainability reporting in teaching and learning by identifying actions to improve sustainability practice that can be implemented and measured. We use the planning tool “backcasting from success” to identify implementation paths for realizing the vision and goals of our institution’s Environmental Sustainability Plan (ESP). We then use Schumacher’s accounting and accountability tool to design a reporting system or Scorecards for embedding sustainability learning across curricula. The results of the design process are three Scorecards for the Lecturer, the University and the Student, which target criteria of three populations within the university, academic staff, administrative and technical staff and students, who can impact targets of the ESP. Each scorecard contains criteria for success in embedding sustainability learning across curricula and levels of performance on these that measure relative success. The Scorecards are at the conceptual stage of implementation and their effectiveness in achieving improvements in embedding sustainability across curricula will be tested initially using selected courses whose staff wish to pilot the scorecards. If successful they will impact all levels of teaching and learning at our institution and affect behavioural changes that increase disciplinary applications of sustainability practice and graduate professional preparation in integrating sustainability practice with their professions. The paper is a venture into auditing of changes in behaviour that potentially reduce whole-of-institution ecological footprint.