Learning and promoting urban sustainability: environmental service learning in an undergraduate environmental studies curriculum

Sustainability education increasingly emphasizes experiential, high-impact learning practices, and the understanding that changes in mind-sets, values, and lifestyles are required for the sustainability of a finite planet. In this essay, I discuss service learning as a sustainability education pedagogy for teachers in higher education interested in teaching and promoting sustainability in an urban environment. I combine examples from scholarly literature with reflections from my students in an undergraduate mid-level environmental service learning course and argue that service learning contributes to teaching and learning about cities and sustainability by enriching students’ understanding of urban political ecology. Service learning promotes at least three distinct goals: First, it helps students to explore intricate connections between ecological, social, and economic issues, including questions of race, gender, and class, through a real-world case study. Second, students actively participate in a democratic learning environment, where community stakeholders, students, and professors are invited to analyze, critique, and articulate what they have learned. Third, participation in service learning improves students’ sense of efficacy toward achieving sustainability goals. Copyright AESS 2014