By Julian Dautremont-Smith
Chief Sustainability Officer
Alfred State College

In part 1 of this post, I examined current practices for identifying sustainability courses and found that definitions of sustainability-focused and -related courses tend to leave too much room for interpretation. As a result, institutions are taking widely varying approaches to course classification and there is a huge range in scores earned on the two credits in STARS that focus on courses (ER Credits 6 and 7). Based on these findings, I argued that more guidance in STARS was necessary. In this post, I’ll make some suggestions for what this guidance should look like.

Given the wide spread of scores earned on ER 6 and 7, the first issue such guidance must address is how wide we should cast our net when classifying sustainability courses. At first blush, a more inclusive approach seems to make sense. Virtually all disciplines have an important role to play in sustainability and it seems appropriate to recognize the contributions that courses are making. Indeed, using a broad definition may enable better engagement with faculty who may not have realized that they were teaching a “sustainability” course.

The problem is that it is too easy to stretch the broader definitions to include virtually all courses. For example, some institutions classified many of their medical and nursing courses as sustainability-related, perhaps on the not-unreasonable basis that human health is an element of sustainability. However, similar logic could be used to count all economics and perhaps even most business courses as sustainability-related on the basis that they address the economic dimension of sustainability. Likewise, the logic would seem to support counting any course that addresses social well-being in one way or another, including sociology, gender studies, cultural studies, psychology, etc. To the extent that the arts contribute to human well-being, theater, music, fine arts, and even art history courses could conceivably be counted. Language courses could count because they facilitate communication across cultures, which is a prerequisite for effective global resource management. Even physical education courses could count since they contribute to human health.

Unfortunately, classifying every course as a sustainability course isn’t useful. It doesn’t provide an incentive for additional integration of sustainability concepts into the curriculum and it doesn't enable meaningful benchmarking over time or in comparison to peers. So how do we create definitions that recognize the potential contribution of all disciplines but still result in useful and comparable data?

Defining “sustainability-focused” in a way that generates more comparable data seems fairly straightforward. The key in my opinion is to make more clear that the course must explicitly focus on sustainability as an integrated concept. That means courses which emphasize just a part of sustainability do not count and neither do traditional courses that include some sustainability content. Providing some examples of courses that likely would and would not count will also help to make this clear. Here’s what I recommend:

A sustainability focused course is one in which the primary focus is sustainability as an integrated concept, including its social, economic, and environmental dimensions. This focus must be explicit. Typically, this will be achieved by including “sustainability” or “sustainable” in the course title. At a minimum, sustainability must appear prominently in the course description. As sustainability is an interdisciplinary topic, such courses generally incorporate insights from multiple disciplines. These courses are also likely to have been created recently since sustainability is a relatively new field of study.

Courses that would likely count:

• Introduction to Sustainability
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Architecture for Sustainability
• Sustainable Business
• Sustainability Science

Courses that could count if their primary focus is explicitly sustainability:

• Introduction to Environmental Studies
• Literature and Nature
• Ecological Economics
• Systems Thinking and Analysis
• International Development
• Environmental Ethics
• Global Environmental Health
• Society and the Environment
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Urban Planning
• Environmental Technology
• Environmental Law and Policy
• Life Cycle Assessment
• Environmental History
• Resilient Societies

Courses that would likely not count:

• Cultural Anthropology
• Organic Chemistry
• Microeconomics
• Transportation Planning
• Geographic Information Systems
• Civil Engineering
• Marine Biology
• Epidemiology
• Introduction to Gender Studies
• Transcendentalist Literature
• Nursing 1
• Oncology

Redefining “sustainability-related” more precisely seems much more challenging. The nomenclature itself seems problematic. Virtually all courses are related to sustainability in some way. Even courses that likely undermine sustainability (e.g. courses on marketing luxury goods or coal mining) are related to sustainability and yet I don’t think we ought to be awarding points for such courses through STARS.

Given this, I think it might be best to retire the “sustainability-related” label and develop new labels that better reflect the different ways courses can advance sustainability. In addition to courses that are focused on sustainability, I can think of two other major categories of courses that we should seek to recognize and encourage through STARS: courses that are inclusive of sustainability and courses that are supportive of sustainability. I define these terms as follows:

A course that is inclusive of sustainability is one that is primarily focused on a topic other than sustainability but includes at least one unit or module on sustainability as an integrated concept, including its social, economic, and environmental dimensions. The word “sustainability” is likely to appear somewhere in the syllabus of such courses.

Courses that would likely count:

• an Introduction to Chemistry course that includes a module on green chemistry and chemistry’s contribution to sustainability
• an Art and Social Change course that examines art’s contribution to sustainability
• a Math in Society course in which practice problems are oriented around sustainability
• a Business in the European Union course with a unit on sustainability
• an Ethics courses that discusses inter-generational equity and the sustainability ethic

A course that is supportive of sustainability includes at least one unit or module that provides skills or knowledge directly connected to solving one or more major sustainability challenges, including: climate change and ocean acidification; poverty and global inequalities; depletion of nonrenewable resources; barriers to cooperation posed by prejudice and intolerance; over-harvesting of renewable resources (e.g. fisheries, soils, and forests); habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity; undemocratic institutions and violations of human rights, over fertilization of water bodies; desertification and water scarcity; violence and war; and toxics in the environment. Such courses do not necessarily cover “sustainability” as a concept but should address more than one of the three dimensions of sustainability (i.e. social well being, economic prosperity, and environmental health).

Courses that would likely count:

• Photovoltaic and Wind Turbine Installation
• a Construction Management course in which students help construct a green building
• Conservation Biology
• Environmental Journalism
• Peace Studies
• Development Studies
• Natural Resource Management
• Organic Agriculture
• Neglected Diseases
• an Urban Planning course in which students develop plans for sustainable redevelopment of a city park
• Bioremediation
• Climate Adaptation
• Integrated Pest Management
• National Environmental Policy Act
• an HVAC course that includes a unit on high-efficiency and geothermal systems
• Life Cycle Assessment
• Geo-engineering
• Cause Marketing
• Green Chemistry
• Environmental Design

Admittedly, these definitions (especially the one for courses that are supportive of sustainability) still leave more room for interpretation than might seem ideal for comparability purposes, but I’m not sure how much additional specificity is possible. I couldn’t figure out how to be more specific without excluding courses that I think we really do want to be able to recognize and encourage through STARS. Given the diversity of courses offered by STARS participants, allowing some room for interpretation seems inevitable and probably desirable. My hope is that these proposed definitions would significantly reduce, if not eliminate, variability in how institutions are classifying and reporting on sustainability courses.

If AASHE were to incorporate these new definitions into STARS, I’d recommend counting all three types of sustainability courses equally. It's not obvious that one type of course inherently contributes more to sustainability than another. Valuing the courses equally also reflects the reality that the differences in content between a course that is focused on sustainability and a course that is supportive of sustainability may be quite small in some cases. This approach is likely to lead to more accurate categorization since participants would not be tempted to classify each course in the most lucrative category possible.

I'm keenly aware that diagnosing the problem is much easier than proposing a workable solution so I’d love comments on these proposed definitions. Constructive suggestions are especially welcome! Are they clear? Too open-ended or too narrow? What would make them better?

New
York City Bus Trip

(seb)
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Bus departs The Commons Circle @ 8:00am
All Guests = $30
Ticket #: 40 of 103

PSA Norouz

Persian Student Association
Saturday, March 2, 2013
UC Ballroom
Doors open @ 7:30pm
UMBC ID = FREE
Ticket #: 59 of 350

OZ Midnight Premiere

(seb)
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Bus departs The Commons Circle @ 11:00pm
All Guests = $5
Ticket #: 5 of 260

Medieval Times Bus Trip

(seb)
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Bus departs The Commons Circle @ 6:00pm
All Guests = $35
Ticket #: 8 of 49

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Concert

(seb)
Sunday, April 21, 2013
8pm
Retriever Activity Center
All Guests = $15
Online Tickets = $20 (seb.umbc.edu/quadmania)
Ticket #: 1159 of 2500

An updated Working Draft of Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) 1.0 was published today by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (WCAG WG) and Evaluation and Repair Tools Working Group (ERT WG), through the joint WCAG 2.0 Evaluation Methodology Task Force (Eval TF). WCAG-EM describes an approach for evaluating how websites, including web applications and websites for mobile devices, conform to WCAG 2.0. Learn more from the WCAG-EM Overview and about the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

The HTML Working Group has published two First Public Working Drafts today. Both documents were developed in collaboration with the Responsive Images Community Group.

• The picture element. The picture element is an image container whose source content is determined by one or more CSS media queries.
• Use Cases and Requirements for Standardizing Responsive Images. This document captures the use cases and requirements for standardizing a solution for responsive images. The use cases and requirements were gathered with consultation with HTML Working Group and WHATWG participants, RICG group members, and the general public.

Learn more about the HTML Activity and about W3C Community Groups.

You don't build a brand like FUBU by begging for favors. Daymond John explains how he found partners who believed in him.

In 1992, Daymond John started selling homemade hats and shirts on the street. Within a few years, he had turned FUBU into a popular clothing line. For John, it all came down to supply and demand. (And being friends with a few rappers didn't hurt, either.)

I started FUBU selling hats and screenprinted T-shirts, but the ones that really got us noticed were our embroidered shirts. I had 10 of them. Not 10 styles of shirts. Just 10 shirts. For the first few years, I put those 10 shirts on rappers to wear in their videos. I'd put one on LL Cool J, take it back, and put it on Method Man and take it back. Because of those videos, people saw the product everywhere, but they couldn't get it. It built up huge demand.

At the time, I really wanted to be in Macy's. That was my Holy Grail. But the big department stores we approached said, "We don't know. We think those clothes are going to attract the wrong type of people into our stores who will steal clothes or get in shootouts."

So, instead, we focused on the mom-and-pop shops--the small chain stores in the middle of the hood. These were the type of places where you go in and the owner says, "This is a great brand! These guys are on fire! You need to wear this!" Those were people we could build an intimate relationship with.

Within a few years, the department stores came around. They found out those mom-and-pop stores were making a lot of money from our products. The first department store we landed was Macy's. The best part was, they supported us. We didn't have to walk around hat in hand. This was something they wanted to do. It's always better to do business with people who respect you. When you go around begging for favors, it doesn't get you far.

Day job while launching FUBU: Waiter at Red Lobster
Start-up capital: $100,000 from a home mortgage
FUBU's peak annual revenue: $350 million

Your company culture isn't as friendly and supportive as you want it to be. What can you do about it? Seth Godin has an unorthodox idea.

As if you needed any more evidence that bullying behavior is corrosive to your culture, here on Inc. last week we reported the results of two studied that found being a jerk is actually contagious, spreading from the original bully to his or her unfortunate victims and then outward to infect the office culture in general.

For business leaders, this science tracing how bad behavior spreads through a group may be interesting, but the more pressing question about bullying for bosses probably is: How do you put the genie back in the bottle?

If your company has somehow become infected with nastiness and your culture (and team productivity) is suffering, is there any way to battle the malaise and re-instill a sense of safety and support among team members?

A fascinating recent blog post by best-selling author Seth Godin offers a suggestion. For inspiration, Godin looks to perhaps the world's most bully-intensive environment--yes, you guessed it, high school—to explore the roots of nasty behavior and what interventions are effective to stop it.

He starts out with a clever definition of what bullying actually is: "Bullying is what happens when an individual with power exercises that power against people who don't fit in. By threatening to expose or harm or degrade the outlier, the bully reinforces the status quo in a way that increases his power." And goes on to suggest that to combat jerk behavior at its root, organizations, whether they be schools or small business, need to explicitly celebrate the weird:

Bullying persists when bureaucracies and hierarchies permit it to continue. It's easier to keep order in an environment where bullying can thrive (and vice versa), because the very things that permit a few to control the rest also permit bullies to do their work. The bully uses the organization's desire for conformity to his own ends.

At the fabulous lab school in Manhattan, they're making huge progress at undoing this problem. A recent assembly (organized and run by students and volunteers) was created around weirdness, fear and most of all, "owning it."… When there isn't a race to fit in the most, bullying those that don't fit in loses much of its power.

This is incredibly brave and risky for those in charge. It involves trusting people to become something wonderful, as opposed to insisting that they fit in at all costs.

"We're all a lot weirder than we'd like the world to know," he concludes. Bullying, in other words, thrives in environments that value conformity and implicitly demand group members hide their true selves to make life easier for the higher ups. That sounds like high school, but remove the raging hormones and ill-advised fashion experiments, and it also sounds like plenty of businesses.

Could encouraging a little more weirdness make your business a friendlier and more productive place to work?

Trying to build a new relationship? You'll never manage it by staring at a screen. Here's what you need to do instead.

We’ve stopped seeing each other. You and me. All of us.

Our eyes may indeed be windows to our soul, but with our necks craned downward and our eyes focused on tiny handheld screens, who can tell? We hardly make an effort to look at the person we’re talking to anymore. Younger people, in general, find it challenging to maintain eye contact with adults. Video conferencing complicates things further. When is the last time you consciously looked into someone’s eyes and had a meaningful conversation?

When nearly every personal and business interaction uses a screen as an intermediary, it’s difficult to develop and maintain meaningful relationships with employees, customers and partners. But such relationships are the cornerstone of building a long-term business. So put down that smart phone, walk away from the computer, and think about these five things:

Speak with Your Eyes

We communicate so much with a simple look. Are you genuinely interested and receptive to ideas or do your eyes dart away while someone is talking? A challenging stare can thwart collaboration before a word is spoken. Even if your eyes are relaxed and attentive, your eyebrows may convey concern, surprise and other emotions. Relax your face when you’re meeting with someone and use your eyes to meet theirs for five seconds at a time, while making note of their overall body language.

Listen to Their Eyes

Without looking directly into someone’s eyes, you’ll miss millions of visual clues as to what’s going on inside their head. Can you see fear? A spark of excitement? A glazed look of boredom? Are the other person’s arms crossed or relaxed at their side? You can’t read body language if your eyes are looking past them, down at papers or at your phone. Carefully pay attention to the other person’s eyes, and you’ll learn more than you ever could from lifeless words on a screen.

Look for the “Tell”

In poker, it’s called the “tell”: the habitual signal your opponent makes that betrays whether he or she is holding a full house or a hand full of nothing. Someone is telling you something. She can’t make eye contact with you. Why? Perhaps she’s afraid to deliver bad news or wants to be somewhere else. If a customer or employee is staring at the ceiling or evading your eyes for no apparent reason at all, you need to figure out what’s really going on.

Be Shifty-Eyed

If you’re making a presentation to a group you need to look at everyone in the room. The guy over there in blue jeans? He might be the CEO. Ignoring eye contact with all the women? You’ve just alienated both the CMO and CFO. Take your time. Be deliberate. Connect while you speak by scanning and making brief eye contact with everyone in the room. That’s a great way to change your message into a truly powerful connection.

But Don’t Be Creepy

Eye contact is something most people struggle with, yet it’s a critical component of communication. Relax. Blink normally. Don’t squint or stare. Above all, eye contact should not be awkward or creepy. The goal is not to drill into the other person’s soul with an unbroken gaze for extended periods of time. Just work on being fully present when meeting with someone -- and pay attention to your eyeballs.