Bringing Theory to Practice: Responding to Climate Change and Opportunities for Changemaking
Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP) is an independent Project established in 2003 in partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). For 15 years, Bringing Theory to Practice has given grants, held convenings, and produced publications in support of these goals. They have funded more than 550 projects at 359 institutions. The result has been a wealth of innovative practice and research distributed throughout their network.
Their biweekly letter Bringing It #32: Responding to Climate Change and Opportunities for ChangemakingResponding to Climate Change and Opportunities for Changemaking features Professor Gray Kochhar-Lindgren (12th February 2020). Gray shared how HKU Common Core was:
- Embedding courses across our Areas of Inquiry: 1) Scientific and Technological Literacy, 2) Arts & Humanities, 3) Global Issues, and 4) China;
- Mapping appropriate courses to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);
- Developing a Transdisciplinary Minor in Sustaining Cities, Cultures, and the Earth;
- Developing a two-year series of courses and undergraduate research opportunities called Critical Zones: Gender, Cities, and Well-Being;
- Support students to enter case competitions on the SDGs;
- Working with the Sustainability Offices and curricular initiatives across all the UGC-funded Hong Kong Universities through the Hong Kong Sustainability Campus Consortium (HKSCC);
- Partnering with both student associations and local charities, corporations, and NGOs on this series of issues;
- Invented GLADE (Global Liberal Arts Design Experiments) to link general education programmes similar to ours in research-intensive universities, out of which we are working with partners to develop shared modules;
- Mentor student groups from U21’s RISE competition around these issues;
- Hosting an annual Transdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Exchange with Utrecht University on The-More-Than-Human-City, and issues of sustainability and climate change always emerge.
“Across the HKU campus, there are many other initiatives being developed. I think that every university/college should have a flexible curricular plan to address the SDGs/Climate Change; that all of these should be trans-/inter-/multi-disciplinary; and that we should think across scales from the classroom to the university to the community to global partnerships in order to create the most effective and imaginatively rich possibilities for liveable futures.”
Bringing Theory to Practice (BTtoP):
https://www.bttop.org/news-events/bringing-it