This article reflects lessons learned from work with thousands of educators from all types of K-12 schools. While recognizing that there is no schooling-for-sustainability blueprint that fits all schools, the Center for Ecoliteracy--www.ecoliteracy.org--in Berkeley, California, has articulated a set of precepts that it calls "Smart by…

This white paper examines the business case for environmental and sustainability (E&S) employee education and engagement. The "business case" is defined as both quantifiable measures of the business value for the sustainability program (e.g. money saved, energy use reduction, etc.) as well as less easily measurable assets such as…

Over the past two decades, public interest in environmental issues has risen dramatically and stories about the environment are regularly featured on the front page of newspapers and are the focus of successful documentary films. Today, environmental education has become an element of many provincial curricula, with the understanding that young…

Contrary to what we often hear and teach, there is good news to be found on the environmental front. Environmental success stories show us not only that sustainability is possible, but also how people have made it happen. We can make these stories and their lessons accessible to students with help from the EcoTipping Points Project, which has…

This article reports on the message of an environmental activist during a speech last week at a conference of the National Council for Workforce Education. According to the environmental activist Van Jones, community colleges play a pivotal role in pushing the fossil-fuel-dependent economy toward a reliance on renewable energy. A community…

When the modern U.S. environmental movement began in the 1970s, it relied largely on regulation to reduce negative environmental impacts. Companies responded by creating centers of environmental expertise within their organizations. The major focus of a second wave of corporate environmentalism, which began during the late 1980s, was on…

This article talks about how the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) embraced a precedent-setting green policy that would forever change its approach to education. The "greenprint" for how environmental design and construction could be done mandates that all new buildings funded with at least half of the funds from its $2.2…

A growing body of literature on community gardening, watershed restoration, and similar "civic ecology" practices suggests avenues for integrating social and ecological outcomes in urban natural resources management. In this paper, we argue that an environmental education programme in which learning is situated in civic ecology practices…

The Rostrum is a quarterly publication of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) An SLO Terminology Glossary: A Draft in Progress by Lesley Kawaguchi; (2) A Tale of Two Data Elements by Mark Wade Lieu; (3) Sustainability and the Academic Senate by David Beaulieu and Don…

In the beginning of the 21st century, the advancement of science and technology, and communications in particular, made possible for one to know how human activities affect ecosystems and the biosphere. Knowing the increasingly larger scale and volume of the planet occupied by the human species, it would be absolutely reckless on one's part not to…

The driving premise of this paper is that students should be schooled in built and natural environments that afford them ways of understanding of how their daily physical actions and social choices affect the earth. Views of prominent philosophers and scholars in support of this premise are described. Next, four cases illustrate how schools can…

Beyond finding sufficient funds and resources or implementing particular policies and programs, schools need to develop the capacity to overcome the constantly changing demands of an often turbulent educational environment. Drawing from studies of six schools that have maintained good reputations and records of performance over significant periods…

The goal of this manual is to create a new generation of high performance school facilities in California. The focus is on public schools and levels K-12, althoughmany of the design principals apply to private schools and higher education facilities as well. High performance schools are healthy, comfortable, energy efficient, resource efficient,…

This publication presents the following articles: (1) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Develops Student Recruitment and Retention Strategies; (2) Marketer Advises Tech Educators Appeal to Teens' Emotions, Desires to Do Something Important; (3) Digital Bridge Academy Gets At-Risk Students on Paths to Knowledge-Based Careers; (4) Project…

University of California Sea Grant Extension Program provides training and technical assistance to fishers, farmers, planners, and conservationists on projects such as coastal ecosystem health, marine environmental protection, fisheries management, aquaculture, salmon habitat restoration, and controlling nonpoint-source pollution; supports…