Introduction
Today’s pressing challenges require tomorrow’s leaders to be educated about social and environmental issues, and how to both reduce harm and create positive impact. Yet, higher educational programs often fall short of this challenge, especially in business schools. Faced with the climate emergency, we, students and young graduates, have the capacity to mobilize our establishments and take steps with them to rethink our education through a lens of environmental sustainability and social equity.
This platform is here to help you get started. It was created thanks to previous resources curated by Pour Un Réveil Écologique, the association Together for Earth; adapted and expanded by the Curriculum Change Team at Re_Generation. The participation of many associations and students, whom we warmly thank, also made it possible to enrich this platform. It is intended for all students and graduates of higher education establishments.
It should be noted that decolonization and Indigenization within business schools are important topics that should be explicitly included throughout these conversations.
Any resources or insights we missed? Please send them to us through this form!
Join our Slack community to meet other student leaders.
Assembling a group
Alone we go faster, together we go further.
The first step to creating meaningful change is connecting and creating a group with others who share your mission. This section is all about how to find collaborators, set up a working group with them, set goals for the group, and create an action plan to collectively take action.
Summary
Sharing your project with the student body
If you’re aiming to rally a team for a project on curriculum change, your first step needs to be crafting your message and getting it out there. This section provides advice on the different ways you can reach out to students to find collaborators, and the other stakeholders that can help you in this process. Not sure what to say? Our PDF guide at the bottom of the page includes some potential talking points, which you can integrate into your discussions, emails, posts and more.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 3-5)
Set up a working group
Once you’ve reached out to the student body, you’ll want to form a group with those who’ve expressed interest in your cause. It’s important to capture this momentum and interest by structuring people into a team that can get things done. It’s also important to consider the make up of your group. An effective – and long-lasting – group will include a diversity of backgrounds, ages, and perspectives. It should also involve some faculty and staff. This section provides tips on getting the working group started: things like who should be included in your working group, and how to organize your first meeting.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 6-7)
Define the goals of the working group
From the time the working group is formed, it is important to collectively define goals to ensure that everyone on the team is aligned. This section discusses the global issues that might shape the goals of your group, and tips for how to align a team around these ideas. Understanding the background thoroughly, and having resources to back you up, will be critical to convincing your school’s administration, professors, and other students to enact change. This section also includes examples of actions already being taken at business schools around Canada, which might serve as helpful role models to inspire action at your school.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 8-9)
Structure the working group
By this point, you’ve clarified what you seek to do and what your objectives will be. It is now time for you to structure your working group so that you and your team do not lose motivation and drive, so that everyone feels involved 100% in the group. This section describes how to keep things organized and productive within your team. This means planning out the kinds of communication you’ll keep up with your teammates, and when/how you’ll meet with them.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 10)
Define a plan of action
The final step before you get rolling is to create a clear action plan for your working group. This plan will have to be specifically tailored to the environment at your school. The steps depend on things like what has already been done, what faculty are working on, and the specific skills and passions within your team. But regardless of all these specifics, there are certain questions you’ll need to ask and answer. This section outlines those questions, and some of the key steps you might want to include in your action plan to answer them.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 11)
Any resources or insights we missed? Please send them to us through this form!
Join our Slack community to meet other student leaders.
Interacting with your institution’s stakeholders
Outside your close circle of collaborators – your working group – you’ll also need to interact with many other stakeholders in your school in order to enact change. You’ll need to generate buy-in for your ideas, and learn from about how it can be made a reality. These stakeholders include: students, faculty, administration, and alumni.
Summary
Student Peers
In order for the project to be credible in the eyes of the administration, you’ll need to gather and demonstrate broader student support. This support will legitimize your mission: it will show the administration that there is a demand for the programs and changes you are asking for. To mobilize them as campus stakeholders, here are several potential methods you can employ. This section outlines some of these methods.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 2)
Faculty Members
One of the major challenges in introducing a new course or transforming an old one is the academic resources at your disposal. Without a professor trained on the subject, competent and motivated by the course, the project is more difficult to implement. It is therefore very important to discuss with the professors in your school and make them your allies. This section provides guidance on: identifying the professors who might align with your cause, integrating them into the action plan of your work group, and identifying points of resistance to change.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 3)
School Administration
Arguably, the most important stakeholder who can drive curriculum change in schools is the school administration. These are people like associate deans, and program directors. Administration stakeholders have the power to instigate a program review – a formal process designed to create curriculum change. They also must approve any changes to program structure, or new courses. As a result, it’s essential to engage with these stakeholders closely. This section provides guidance on which administration members to engage with, and resources for how to prepare for a conversation with them.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 4-5)
Alumni
Alumni are very important actors of an institution and are living proof of the value the school’s education provided. They are also an important source of income for universities, which will help to amplify the voice of your movement. This section provides guidance on finding alumni, contacting them, and involving them in your work to increase pressure on your school and drive change.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 6-8)
Any resources or insights we missed? Please send them to us through this form!
Join our Slack community to meet other student leaders.
Assess the current state of curricula
Before seeking to change curricula, it’s essential to understand exactly where your school sits today. How well are sustainability topics being integrated? What is the general perception of the student body on sustainability integration? Are there options available across all programs? Are they well promoted to drive enrollment? This phase of your work will help you answer these questions.
Summary
Understand the layout of educational pathways
Before considering what to change, it’s important to map out the existing landscape of courses and programs. You’ll want to know which courses are mandatory for which programs, and how they all fit together. This will ultimately help you assess the inclusion of sustainability within the different educational pathways students at your school might take. With this information, it’ll be easier to assess and ensure that students are adequately exposed to sustainability regardless of which pathway they take in their education. This section suggests steps to create such a map for your school.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 2)
Identify courses that already touch on sustainability
After mapping out all the courses and programs, it’s time to dive a little deeper into specific courses and their inclusion of sustainability. This section provides guidance on your working group can identify whether a course is centred around sustainability, whether it touches upon it, or whether it disregards it entirely. It also includes the Re_Generation evaluation tool which can help you assess each course.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 3)
Assess inclusion of sustainability content in various educational pathways
This step brings together the work you’ve done on mapping out courses and programs, and that on assessing each course for its inclusion of sustainability. The goal: to understand how well sustainability is incorporated in the various key learning pathways students at your school undertake. This requires considering whether sustainability-oriented content is mandatory or optional, as well as considering the types of courses that include it. Student feedback is an important source of information to make this assessment complete – this section includes a guide for running a student survey on sustainability in curricula.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 4)
Reach out to individual professors
Beyond the highly engaged professors who you’ve been working with more closely, It’s also important to remain engaged with other faculty throughout the process of assessing the state of curricula at your school. Building these relationships will help you improve your understanding of current operations, and it’ll make it easier to work together for change. This section provides guidance about how to set up interviews with professors, and how to manage the relationships with them across your working group team.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 5)
Identify barriers to change
To finish the initial assessment of your school, you should try to understand why questions of sustainability have not been sufficiently integrated into the school curriculum. All the stakeholders you work with can help you understand different elements and challenges. This section highlights some of the common challenges you might face in your efforts to drive curriculum change. It provides guidance for navigating bureaucratic complexity, faculty resistance to change, and team attrition for your working group.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 6)
Consider decolonization in curricula
In Canada, any curriculum changes that are aiming for sustainability must include considerations around decolonization and Indigenization. This section outlines the important concepts and definitions to be aware of. These include: decolonization, reconciliation, unlearning, and Indigenization. The section also describes what it means to decolonize curricula, and outlines some suggested strategies and actions you and your school can take – in and outside the classroom.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 7-9)
Any resources or insights we missed? Please send them to us through this form!
Join our Slack community to meet other student leaders.
Make recommendations and take action for change
Finally, all with the information you’ve collected, you’ll be in a position to make recommendations to your school administration. To aid you in this process, we’ve broken down some of the areas you might make recommendations within, as well as areas you can likely get involved in to drive change yourself.
Summary
Courses and Programs
This section outlines the various ways sustainability can be introduced into courses, from new specialized courses to the addition of new case studies or modules into existing courses. It also introduces and outlines the importance of considering the structure of the courses that involve sustainability. It’s essential that the courses are engaging and promoted well – both to ensure students absorb the content, and to drive enrolment in the courses. This section outlines ways to ensure engagement, from integrating guest speakers and experiential learning, to providing opportunities for research projects. Finally it includes examples of existing business school courses in Canada and around the world which integrate sustainability in various ways.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 2-4)
Conferences and Extracurriculars
During their time at business school, students don’t just learn within the classroom. Instead, much of the learning occurs in extracurricular activities, including conferences. This section outlines how sustainability can be integrated in these activities. It provides guidance for working with student organisations or the school itself to run conferences in order to ensure sustainability topics are incorporated adequately. It also provides some examples of sustainability focused conferences at business schools in Canada.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 5-7)
Interdisciplinarity
Sustainability issues are complex, and addressing them requires input from a variety of fields — from business, to science, to the arts and engineering. Thus, sustainability in curriculum should be cross-disciplinary, too. Students need opportunities to work with others who have different backgrounds. They also need opportunities to learn from different disciplinary perspectives in the classroom. These outcomes can be achieved in a variety of ways – this section highlights some of them, including examples from business schools in Canada. It also outlines the current challenges to interdisciplinarity, and some suggested solutions.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 8-9)
Campus Life
When it comes down to it, a university is a business: it has operations just like any other — beyond teaching. And those operations can be made more ethical and sustainable. This section includes a few suggestions for how to improve sustainability on your campus — addressing issues like waste, energy, inclusivity, and carbon emissions.
Learn more in our PDF guide (page 10)
Any resources or insights we missed? Please send them to us through this form!
Join our Slack community to meet other student leaders.
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© 2022 Re_Generation. All rights reserved.
© 2023 Re_Generation. All rights reserved.