In the School of Design and Environment of the National University of Singapore, the course entitled “Seminars on Sustainable Cities” has been jointly offered for the past three years by faculties from the three departments – Architecture, Building and Real Estate. Its syllabus covers a wide range of sustainability-related topics, including environmental ethics, management and leadership, green building materials, urban planning, and community engagement. This course has two key objectives: (1) providing students with real-world opportunities to apply what they learn about sustainable cities to benefit the society through community engagement; and (2) encouraging students to regularly keep track of their own daily sustainable behavior. After being briefed by the Mayor of the Northwest district of Singapore on the district’s sustainability vision, each student was required to participate in one of three community projects as: a) An organizer of a “green” workshop for local school children, in collaboration with a youth group in the district, or b) A volunteer to help out with waste-sorting and recycling, or c) A volunteer to conduct house visits, to share messages on energy, water and food waste reduction to households, and encourage them to sign up for an energy and water audit activity organized by the district government. Representatives from the district government and the course instructor also participated in these projects. Furthermore, each student was also tasked to write and share a personal diary on how he/she had improved his/her behavior for a period of two months during this course. The objective is to motivate students to consciously think about how they could improve their own social behavior (e.g. conserving energy and water at home) and thus internalize lessons they learnt from weekly take-home readings and in-class seminars. Findings based on qualitative feedback from the different project stakeholders, including participants of the workshops organized by the students, showed that the participation of the students was effective. Quantitative feedback provided by the students themselves rated the course 4 out of a total of 5 points, with “having the chance to work on community projects” being listed as the main strength of the course. This evidence indicated that the two course objectives were met. However, the students also highlighted the challenges faced by them, including a last minute decision by a local school to cancel their participation in one of the “green” workshops organized by the students. From a broader perspective, the successes and challenges of this course reflect the need and potential for educational institutions and community organizations to collaborate and offer students precious opportunities to test out their assumptions in reality, so that sustainability is no longer a theoretical ideal but a strategic plan that can be put into practice. Through this process, students can also learn that implementing real-world sustainability projects require patience, flexibility and teamwork to overcome the many unanticipated problems that will challenge the success of these projects.
Key words: community engagement, waste recycling, energy conservation, diary reflection
2b. Educating for sustainability
