Sustainability Awards Will Help Redesign Ivan Allen College Courses to Include the SDGs

Posted November 29, 2023

Six Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts faculty members from four schools have won Sustainability Education Innovation Awards funded by Sustainability Next and managed by the Undergraduate Sustainability Education Committee.  

Overall, nine faculty members from around Georgia Tech were awarded seed grants to help transform courses to include sustainability challenges and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

The awards advance Georgia Tech’s Strategic Plan goal to connect globally and amplify impact by contributing “to global collaborative efforts that advance the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals through our education, research, and service.” 

The Ivan Allen College faculty and the classes to be redesigned are: 

• Kate Pride Brown, School of History and Sociology: Introduction to Sociology and Environmental Sociology through the UN SDGs 

• Kelly Comfort, School of Modern Languages: ML 2500: Think Globally, Act Locally: An Introduction to Cross-Cultural Studies & the UN SDGs 

• Roberto Gonzalez, School of Economics: Problem-Based Learning of Statistical Models for Undergraduate Economics Students 

• Natalie Khazaal, School of Modern Languages: Teaching Sustainability in the Arabic Language Classroom 

• Christopher Peace, School of Literature, Media, and Communication: SDGs for Business Communication 

• Hongchen Wu, School of Modern Languages: Two courses — Language and Life in Asia; Intro to Linguistics 

“With many of the first and second-round projects featuring high enrollment and core courses, these ‘seed grants’ will significantly expand the reach of Georgia Tech’s sustainability-across-the-curriculum initiatives,” Rebecca Watts Hull, assistant director of faculty development for sustainability education initiatives in the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), wrote in a recent post about the awards. 

Four Ivan Allen College faculty from four schools were among the 21 campus recipients in last year's inaugural awards.