| Faculty and graduate students presented sustainability research at the first Sustainability Across the Curriculum Symposium at the Annual Celebration of Excellence by Students Thursday.
The Office of Graduate Studies and the Curriculum, Research and Community Engagement Work Group of the University Sustainability Committee presented 10 discussions in the Bluebonnet Ballroom on sustainability research across different disciplines and highlighted the research of UTA faculty and doctoral students.
Kent Hurst, a doctoral student from the School of Urban and Public Affairs, said people talk about sustainability issues at national and international levels, but don’t talk about it on the local level.
English graduate student Christy Tidwell gave a presentation called “Science Fictions of Sustainability” and told stories on how science fiction is connected to nature.
“Science fiction can be a valuable addition to discussions about sustainability and can help educate the public about environmental issues,” Tidwell said.
She discussed the books The Wanderground by Sally Miller Gearhart, Earth by David Brin and A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski in her presentation.
“Novels are important because they raise issues in a narrative form,” Tidwell said. “Humans can’t communicate psychically with animals, plants and nature.”
Stacy Alaimo, President’s Sustainability Committee co-chair, said the symposium was fabulous. Alaimo said she would plan more in advance the next year.
Associate history professor Christopher Morris concluded the symposium with his presentation called “The Implications of Environmental and Sustainability Studies for the Discipline of History.”
People have interacted for a long time without using the word sustainability. Now people use sustainable economy, sustainable development, sustainable project and sustainable profits.
“History and historians need historical perspectives of the sustainability,” Morris said. “It is important to understand how we in the 21st century arrived at our particular point at of unsustainability.”
Morris said histories that attend to the matter of sustainability serve to point out the natural environment has not been a backdrop for human history. Rather, natural history and human history have been entwined, most obviously when nature presents human societies at certain historic moments with possibilities or limitations.
“Our society faces the limitations of diminishing supplies of fossil fuels and, more important, an atmosphere that is too full of carbon dioxide and other gases, the result of burning fossil fuels, which altogether are imposing serious limitations on our future,” he said.
English graduate student Jarrod Stringer said he learned about sustainability from different perspectives.
“I enjoyed the interaction of multiple disciplines as they react with our part of the natural world,” Stringer said.
Correction
An earlier version of this story appeared March 26, 2010 on www.theshorthorn.com with information that should not have been included. This version has been amended to not show that information. See: Comment below by Kent Hurst, doctoral student from the School of Urban and Public Affairs.
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1 Correction …
Written by Kent L Hurst, on 03-27-2010 20:26
I appreciate the Shorthorn’s coverage of what was an incredibly diverse and stimulating set of presentation regarding sustainability research here at UTA. I only regret that more students didn’t avail themselves of the opportunity to participate in this first such symposium here at UTA.
Please allow me to clarify the point I was trying to make that was unfortunately misrepresented in this article. The climate protection (i.e., greenhouse gas emission reduction) discourse that has taken place to date has been largely framed by the IPCC and national political interests. This discourse must be engaged at regional (e.g., North Texas) and local levels in order to better understand these scalar needs and to provide needed input for negotiations at the national and international levels.
Research conducted by Professor Jeff Howard and me indicates that sustainability and related development practices are discussed, if not always implemented, widely throughout the US and Metroplex communities. I was merely emphasizing that these discussions must include the climate protection agenda for any intergenerational sustainability agenda to be effective.
Thank you.
http://www.theshorthorn.com/content/view/19164/265/
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