Teaching Portfolio

Life cycle thinking and sustainability are only successful if we engage our global community to participate, which requires that we do not bind the principles and competencies of sustainability to a specialized field. Therefore, my approach to teaching and learning is interdisciplinary. I focus on incorporating the 5 key Competencies of Sustainability (Wiek et al., 2011) and the 8 core Principles of Sustainability (Gibson et al., 2006) into all of my learning environments to help students create strong and resilient outcomes.

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The learning environments my students and I create are the most successful when we operate on the belief that to move life cycle and sustainability thinking forward we need to approach life cycle and sustainability thinking from every discipline, background, and life experience. In all learning environments, whether my role is that of an educator or a student, my focus is on learning from the experience and wisdom of those around me, engaging their perspectives, and sparking new ideas. Each lecture, supervised project, and guided reading is an opportunity to ignite students’ ideas by providing them with questions, theories, methods, and tools which enable them to apply life cycle thinking and sustainability to their passions.

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The flipped classroom, discussion, community-driven, and project-based learning methods I employ allow students to customize their learning experience. Each assignment encourages students to tailor their projects, creating templates for future research and innovation within their field of specialization. Not only does this approach allow students the opportunity to apply the competencies and principles of life cycle and sustainable thinking to their own passion projects, but it also provides a robust community where students can engage with diverse perspectives and ask questions that benefit from different types of knowledge.