Join us for Teaching for Impact, the opening event of SDG Month at UBC. Presented by UBC Sustainability Hub, this faculty-focused event provides an open space to connect and advance sustainability-informed teaching across all disciplines at UBC, with a particular emphasis on climate change.
Together, we will explore the key role that higher education plays in preparing students with the knowledge, skills, and ethical frameworks required to address today's complex challenges —from climate change and environmental health to social inequities.
Schedule and Activities
TEACHING-FOCUSED SESSIONS
BC Hydro Theatre
10 AM - 3 PM
A series of themed, facilitated sessions that invite faculty to explore practical, innovative ways to integrate sustainability and climate change into their teaching.
- Transformative Pedagogies for Climate Education
10 - 10:50 AM
This is a virtual session and will be livestreamed at the BC Hydro Theatre. Participants can choose to register to attend online instead.
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Speakers
- Hilary Inwood, Department of Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, UofT
- Kshamta Hunter, Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
- Ellen Field, Faculty of Education, Lakehead University
- Joshua Hill, Department of Education, Mount Royal University
- Moderated by Michèle Martin, Program Specialist, Waterloo Climate Institute.
This panel brings together educators and practitioners to explore how teaching and learning can respond meaningfully to the contemporary climate crisis. Panelists will discuss transformative pedagogies that move beyond information transmission to foster critical thinking, compassion, agency, and action. Through examples from practice and research, the conversation will examine how climate education can create transformative learning pathways and empower learners to navigate uncertainty, engage with complex systems, and contribute to just and sustainable futures.
- Climate Curriculum Clinic
11 - 11:50 AM
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Facilitators
- Jens Vent-Schmidt, Educational Consultant, Design and Facilitation, CTLT, UBC
- Kyle Nelson, Community Engaged Learning Officer, CCEL, UBC
- Sandra Scott, Professor of Teaching, Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
- Fernanda Tomaselli, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship, and Land One Director, UBC
- Kshamta Hunter, Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
- Anjali Varghese and Tanay Suresh, Student perspectives facilitators.
This supportive, hands-on session is designed to help faculty embed transformative pedagogies into their courses to advance climate education. Participants will receive guidance from expert faculty and curriculum developers as they explore practical ways to integrate climate content, assignments, pedagogies, and community-engaged experiential projects into their teaching. The session emphasizes collaborative learning, reflection, and actionable curriculum design strategies tailored to diverse disciplinary contexts.
- Community Engaged Learning: Working with Municipalities as Partners
12 - 12:50 PM
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Speakers
- Melissa McHale, Associate Professor, Urban Ecology and Sustainability, Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship, UBC
- James Connolly, Associate Professor, School of Community and Regional Planning, and Bachelor of Urban Studies Co-Director, Fculty of Applied Science, UBC
- Sara Harris, Professor of Teaching, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Faculty of Science, UBC
- Susan Grossman, Director, Centre for Community Engaged Learning, UBC
This session invites faculty to explore community-engaged and experiential learning through partnerships with municipalities. Drawing on the presenters' experiences, the discussion will focus on what faculty look for when designing learning opportunities that address real-world needs and how UBC can move forward in facilitating these opportunities across the university. The session will include small group discussions.
- Health, Climate and Sustainability in Teaching and Learning
1 - 1:50 PM
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Speakers
- Michael Brauer, Professor, School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, UBC
- Patrick Kirchen, Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Applied Science, and Director of the Clean Energy Research Centre, UBC
- Liv Yoon, Assistant Professor, School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education, UBC
This session invites faculty to explore the intersections between health, climate change, and sustainability, and how health can serve as an accessible entry point for integrating climate change and sustainability into teaching. The session will highlight human and environmental health as shared values that resonate across disciplines. Faculty will learn how to frame sustainability through health-related topics to deepen student engagement, connect global challenges to everyday experiences, and enrich curricula with timely, interdisciplinary approaches. The session will include small group discussions.
- AI and Sustainability in the Classroom
2 - 2:50 PM
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Speakers
- Zoe Morris, Associate Director, Teaching and Learning Professional Development, Centre for Teaching Learning and Technology (CTLT), UBC
- Elisa Baniassad, Professor of Teaching, Computer Science, Faculty of Science, and Academic Director of the Learning Technology Innovation Centre, UBC
- Tara Ivanochko, Professor of Teaching, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, and Academic Director, UBC Sustainability Hub
Join us for a session exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence and sustainability in higher education. The discussion will invite us to examine the impacts of AI on teaching and learning through a sustainability lens, considering both its opportunities and limitations, as well as key ethical questions. The session will also reflect on how AI is currently being used within the university and how principles of sustainability can guide its responsible and effective integration into curricula, pedagogy, and academic practice.
COFFEE AND SNACKS CORNER
Policy Labs A + B (Ground floor)
10:00 AM - 3:30 PM
Enjoy light refreshments, including the CIRS signature freshly popped popcorn, sweet treats and coffee!
OPEN FORUM
Ground Floor Atrium
11:30 AM - 1:30 PM
An open space for faculty to connect with and learn about the many support units at UBC that can provide sustainability-relevant resources for their teaching.
Featuring: Office of Wellbeing Strategy, Centre for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL), Centre for Climate Justice (CCJ), Campus and Community Planning (C+CP), Sustainability Hub, Climate Solutions Research Collective (CSRC), Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT), and UBC Psychology.
Open Forum Exhibitors
Visit the Open Forum in the ground-floor atrium to connect with UBC support units, discover sustainability-related resources and tools to enhance your teaching, and explore partnerships that support curriculum development, experiential learning, community engagement, and meaningful approaches to sustainability and climate action.
Review our full list of unit exhibitors to help plan your visit:
Campus + Community Planning
Campus + Community Planning works collaboratively to create a vibrant and resilient campus for an engaged community on the traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people.
The Green Labs Program supports researchers to reduce the environmental impact of laboratory-based activities by implementing sustainable practices and technologies.
The UBC Climate Action Plan 2030 (CAP 2030) puts the university on an accelerated path to net zero emissions for buildings and energy supply as well as to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions for extended impact areas over the next 15 years.
SEEDS creates applied research and interdisciplinary partnerships between students, faculty, staff and community partners to advance sustainability ideas, policies, and practices and create societal impacts by using the Campus as a Living Laboratory.
Centre for Climate Justice
The Centre for Climate Justice at UBC advances the urgent social, political, and economic changes necessary to address the climate crisis. By supporting collaborative, interdisciplinary, and intersectional research across diverse knowledge systems, the Centre is a place of mobilization – connecting critical research and community engagement to meet the demands for climate justice.
Centre for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL)
The Centre for Community Engaged Learning catalyzes, designs, and implements opportunities for students to apply their knowledge and skills to help address the most critical social and environmental issues by collaborating with diverse university and community partners and stakeholders.
Climate Solutions Research Collective
The Climate Solutions Research Collective is a new UBC pan-university initiative designed to build connections across UBC climate researchers, groups and initiatives and to encourage new collaborative research on climate change solutions.
Through seminars, workshops, and a graduate student Solutions Scholars program, it aims to foster engagement across departments and Faculties, and to support graduate students and faculty in applying their research and expertise to climate change mitigation, adaptation, and/or education.
Office of Wellbeing Strategy
The UBC Office of Wellbeing Strategy serves as the core strategic support (or backbone) to advance UBC’s Wellbeing Strategic Framework (WSF), providing system-wide alignment, coordination, communication, facilitation, and evaluation of WSF Roadmap implementation to meet UBC’s 2025 wellbeing targets and commitments to the Okanagan Charter.
Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT)
The Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology (CTLT) offers many services and supports for the UBC Vancouver teaching and learning community, including: teaching practice development, academic program design and renewal, course design, Indigenous engagement, inclusion and accessibility, support for teaching and learning funding programs, and educational evaluation and research. The CTLT is also home to the Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISoTL).
UBC Psychology
UBC Psychology is a leader in research and scholarship — with diverse rankings placing them among the strongest departments in the world. Their faculty, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows conduct research across the spectrum of psychology, representing eight sub-disciplinary specializations: Behavioural Neuroscience, Clinical, Cognitive Science, Developmental, Health, Learning Enhancement, Quantitative Methods, and Social/Personality.
UBC Sustainability Hub
The UBC Sustainability Hub is a staff unit in the Provost’s portfolio that builds on UBC's sustainability leadership record and works to reinforce the University's goals to inspire action for a better world.
Sustainability Education Fellows Program
The Sustainability Education Fellows Program provides UBC Vancouver faculty with up to $20,000 in funding over two years to develop new sustainability-related curricula across disciplines.
UBC's Campus as a Living Lab (CLL) provides a collaborative framework for faculty, staff, students and partners to address urgent global sustainability challenges. We seek to increase UBC’s collective impact by scaling up projects, enhancing knowledge exchange, and catalyzing effective policy influence and action through UBC’s role as an agent of change.
Managed by the Sustainability Hub, CLL supports integration and collaboration among people from different disciplines across the university, along with local, regional and global partners, and enables the sharing of knowledge and experiences. CLL uses campus infrastructure, assets and resources to support applied research projects that have an operational benefit for the university, advance faculty research, and create opportunities for student learning and knowledge exchange.
Coordinated by the Sustainability Hub, the Climate Teaching Connector offers UBC Vancouver instructors an accessible way to integrate climate change-related content into their courses. The program connects faculty with qualified UBC graduate students from diverse disciplines who deliver 50- or 80-minute free guest presentations grounded in their graduate program, research, lived experiences, and unique climate perspectives
Organized by UBC Sustainability Hub, Climate Emergency Week (CEW) at UBC seeks to convene and energize communities of climate action at UBC. CEW invites students, faculty, staff and the UBC community to join events, workshops and activities, and take collective action for justice, people, and our planet.
Presented by
Teaching for Impact is presented by the UBC Sustainability Hub, a staff unit in the Provost’s portfolio that builds on UBC's sustainability leadership record and works to reinforce the University's goals to inspire action for a better world.
This event takes place at the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS). Located on the unceded territory of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), CIRS operates as an interdisciplinary hub for sustainability research, teaching, planning and operations, as well as a sustainable building research subject.
This event is part of SDG Month Canada, a national collaborative initiative that invites all Canadian universities and colleges to organize workshops, panels and other interactive programming to increase awareness of and engagement with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).