October is Campus Sustainability Month, a time to celebrate sustainability teaching and practices in higher education. Incorporating sustainability on college campuses teaches students about their environmental impact, ethical choices relevant to the modern world and the dire consequences of climate change.
As of December 2023, Temple offers 317 sustainability-focused and 554 sustainability-inclusive courses, but many academic departments across campus offer limited sustainability courses. The number of sustainability-focused courses for the 2022-23 academic year also decreased by 60 since 2016-17, according to Temple’s Sustainability Annual Report for 2022-23.
The decrease in sustainability-forward education at Temple includes The Fox School of Business’ decision to eliminate the Corporate Social Responsibility minor during the 2022-23 school year. The minor highlighted topics like human resource management, business administration and legal studies.
Increasing educational efforts to promote sustainability throughout all colleges can further efforts to combat climate change. Temple should integrate sustainability into academics and increase the number of required sustainability courses to promote environmental awareness and better prepare students for a modern, environmentally conscious workforce.
Becca D’Ostilio, a senior communication studies major and corporate social responsibility minor, believes Temple’s decision to eliminate the CSR minor will hurt students in the long run.
“To completely rob students of that opportunity is just not okay,” D’Ostillio said. “There are other schools that are going to be teaching this and then they’re going to be going up in the job market against people that have that education over them.”
As the world grapples with the social and economic reality of climate change, many different industries are taking action by adopting sustainable practices like waste reduction or reducing their carbon footprint. Seventy-five percent of organizations increased their investment in sustainability, according to a 2023 study by Deloitte, a business management consulting company.
“I think that’s also important of mentioning to students, ‘Hey, look at the job market growth of this career,’’ D’Ostillio said. “CSR is huge. Sustainability is huge. You can’t read a business report anymore without seeing the word CSR, without seeing the word sustainability.”
Temple should ensure students take at least one sustainability course because they provide students with moral conflicts of sustainability that will be applicable in future careers.
Without sustainability and ethics classes, students lack crucial ethical problem-solving skills. Students deserve a broader ethical context and educational awareness to engage in solutions for the problems companies are currently creating.
In February, Temple received its first Gold Award in the Sustainability Tracking Assessment & Rating System from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. STARS is an AASHE self-reporting system that measures a university’s sustainability efforts through a bronze, silver, gold or platinum rating.
While the award recognized Temple’s innovative sustainable practices, campus engagement and research, the university fell short in the academics section of the assessment, scoring only 24.19 out of 40 points.
In addition to eliminating the CSR minor, Fox no longer requires students to take the core curriculum course Business Society and Ethics, which focuses on ethical obligations, like business sustainability.
Todd Shiefleing, an associate professor of management at Fox, believes Temple is regressing when it comes to sustainable education.
“You look at other universities beyond Temple that seem like sustainability-type programs are popping up like mushrooms, like everybody is doing more and more in this area, and we’ve been going in reverse,” Schiefleing said.
Temple released a “Climate Action Plan” in 2019 that promoted the integration of sustainable action and a commitment to become carbon neutral by the year 2050. Their annual Sustainability Report for 2022-23 included updates for academic goal progress in sustainability teaching.
While Temple actively takes steps to follow the implementation of the 2019 Climate Action Plan, there is a serious need for an increase in sustainable and climate change-focused educational outlets. The university has yet to address why they’ve made changes to course offerings, but regardless of financial and academic restructuring, teaching sustainability and making ethical choices should remain a priority.
Temple’s current sustainability education opportunities are limited and have very little visibility. For example, the Sustainability Certificate, a twelve-hour, four-course program available to students in all colleges, should be more widespread at Temple, said Rob Kuper, an associate professor of landscape architecture.
“It’s only people who are interested, they’re going to self-select for that. It’s not that every student is going to get it, and that’s what we need,” Kuper said.
Kuper said he is working with additional sustainability advocates to gain visibility on climate change and CO2 emissions while highlighting the possibilities of distributing and integrating sustainable education throughout Temple’s campus.
“A lot of faculty aren’t familiar with climate change, and they might feel uncomfortable, or inadequately prepared in order to include this content into their classrooms, so we do need to train,” Kuper said.
Professors are the core of Temple and work to fulfill the mission goal of innovative teaching. Sustainability courses allow professors to educate others and increase their understanding of incorporating climate change content into any curriculum.
Further, integrating sustainability efforts into current courses can benefit students of all academic backgrounds. Courses that teach sustainability efforts provide students with information on the relationship between humans and the environment. Students deserve the knowledge to address and understand environmental issues across all industries.
Climate change is a multifaceted issue that must be addressed, especially through education. Promoting sustainability-focused and inclusive courses should be a part of Temple’s sustainability and climate-change curriculum expansion.
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