Throughout 2023, a committee comprising staff from Sustainable Duke, the Office of Climate and Sustainability, and Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability has convened to advocate for climate and sustainability fluency’s place in the undergraduate curriculum. This work is being conducted in liaison with the Trinity Curriculum Development Committee (TCDC), which is “charged with reviewing the structure and content of the current Trinity undergraduate curriculum” — which was last revised in 2000 — “and with designing a future curriculum that matches the abilities of Duke and its students.”
In March 2023, TCDC submitted an interim report to Trinity’s Arts and Sciences Council, which identified two essential features of liberal arts education and several core values that any future Duke undergraduate curriculum might include. The following month, the staff committee sent a memo to TCDC asserting that climate and sustainability education are not just timely, but also closely aligned with those features and values. The memo also sketched out models of climate and sustainability education that could be applied in a revised curriculum.
In May, the staff committee met with members of TCDC, who provided feedback on the memo, focusing on the potential role of experiential learning in the new curriculum. The staff committee then met monthly throughout the summer to discuss a proposal centering experiential learning as a vehicle for climate and sustainability education. The proposal will evolve alongside TCDC’s deliberations, which will continue throughout the 2023-24 academic year.