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The Land Design Institute is expanding faculty and
student activities in its first major focus area – sustainability –
and building the LDI’s global sustainability network. This includes
successful implementation of the network’s first global region
network – Sustainability For The Americas (SFTA) -- and its first
two funded consortia: The US-Brazil Sustainability Consortium (USBSC)
and the North American Sustainability, Housing, and Community
Consortium (NASHCC). Each of these consortia is funded for four
years by the U.S. Department of Education Fund For The Improvement
of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) funding. This includes USBSC
funding by FIPSE for the 2003-2007 period, and NASHCC funding by
FIPSE for the 2004-2008 period. The SFTA pursues
an innovative model. This model integrates international experts,
universities committed to sustainability, and local leaders to
educate students to lead local and global societies to a sustainable
future. It layers international sustainability experiences over the
sustainability base students have acquired in their own university.
It provides student immersion experiences, including international
ones, applying their sustainability knowledge in local and
international service learning projects. The model includes a
program for sustaining funding through parallel academic (mobility)
and project funding streams. It includes a nested sustainability
curriculum that provides student access to the expertise of its
international network of consortia partners. It uses Ball State’s
Global Media Network and teleconferencing capabilities to provide
introductory international experiences to a larger student audience
and to better prepare Ball State exchange students to participate
effectively in the program’s international collaborative
local-global partnerships. As part of the SFTA’s
sustainability curriculum, LA498: Introduction to Sustainability was
created and taught as a conventional classroom course to Ball State
students in Fall 2004. In Fall 2005 the course was taught
simultaneously to Ball State students and students of the Catholic
University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil
using the BSU Global Media Network and digital media classroom.
As part of the Sustainability For The Americas
language preparation program, the SFTA created Portuguese 101 and
102 and is funding these courses as Modern Language offerings. These
Portuguese courses, and Spanish courses Ball State was already
offering, combine with FIPSE-funded saturation courses in the
exchange country exchange, provide appropriate language preparation
for Ball State students participating in SFTA exchanges. These
saturation language courses usually occur in the partner country
immediately prior to the exchange student beginning classes in that
language. The SFTA also includes an acculturation
program. This program uses the Ball State global media network
system and advanced digital classroom televideo conferencing
capabilities to begin the student’s acculturation process long
before the foreign study portion of an exchange.
Sustainability For The Americas includes information dissemination
about the program and work produced. This program spreads the word
about the SFTA through papers and keynote addresses at international
conferences, papers at national meetings of professional societies,
book contributions, and presentations in diverse contexts. These
have included national or international level presentations in at
least six countries and four continents. |
