Rhodes University Teaching and Learning
relating to environmental sustainability
Rhodes University is a tertiary institution where leaders learn. Implicit in this statement the fact that future leaders study at the University. It also implies that present University leaders continue to learn and respond to new challenges. In this respect, Rhodes University can be proud of an ethos of lifelong learning. This empowers students and leaders – now and in the future – to remain critically conscious of their attitudes and practices, adapt to contextual changes, and meaningfully address environmental concerns as they arise, in order to promote a sustainable future on an ongoing basis.
Environment in Curriculum
Environmental learning and research is a multidisciplinary enterprise, which is fundamental to academic and professional development at the University. In an era when human-environment interactions are reaching the limits of sustainability, Rhodes University actively encourages staff to incorporate environmental considerations into all courses, in order to equip students to enter environmentally-related careers in a diversity of disciplines, and empower them to make decisions that promote sustainability for the future. Go to the links on this page to explore examples of how different departments address environmental concerns in their teaching and learning.
Biochemistry Microbiology and Biotechnology
ELRC (Environmental Education)
David Landes - in The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why some are so rich and some are so poor (1998/1999) - said on page 524:
In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eyes-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right. The one lesson that emerges is the need to keep trying. No miracles. No perfection. No millennium. No apocalypse. We must cultivate a skeptical faith, avoid dogma, listen and watch well, try to clarify and define ends, the better to choose means.
Go to the Rhodes University ENVIRONMENT front page. Suggestions/Questions? Contact environment(at)ru.ac.za
