Institutions are keen to take advantage of the sustainability trend and design instructors are clamouring to integrate what they know. But where can instructors find time to develop their own syllabus in the age of reduced budgets?

Nathan Shedroff, chair of the California College of Arts MBA Program in Design Strategy, has offered his sustainability curriculum as an open-source license—making a course of study immediately accessible to instructors. 

Shedroff has written a variety of books on experiential and sustainable design practice. He uses an experiential approach to teach students how to change their ideologies and recognize what is needed for sustainable change.

May Chung, the GDC’s National Education Chair, noted the open-source curriculum’s relevance for design students. “The practice of graphic design is changing. There are new strategies, technologies, methodologies, and tools today that students must fully understand as they work towards a professional discipline,” says Chung.

She talks about the need for practicing designers to bridge the gap between varying levels of public awareness and the tendency of large organizations to get bogged down in bureaucracy and terminology, which tends to make the whole subject of sustainability unappealing and inaccessible at best. 

“This open-source syllabus can help instructors teach students how to think critically and use design thinking to solve design challenges and learn how to effectively communicate the solutions with their clients”, adds Chung.

Chung notes that the curriculum is versatile for instructors and provides a strong framework for future investigation where other components such as political and cultural issues can be included–affecting change to benefit the whole of society. She says that the team focus in the curriculum lends a realistic environment for design inquiry and adds that “the focus on solving customer and societal needs first, helps encourage accountability and provides stronger support”. 

But she warns that no syllabus is complete without a tie-in to the community to ensure learning continues and evolves. She recommends including a “community service learning” component, where students work with designers and organizations in a collaborative atmosphere, for reciprocal learning. This, in turn, fosters civic engagement and nurtures the designer's unique role in society.

The developer of the open-source curriculum, Nathan Shedroff, continues as one of a dozen or so advisors to the GDC National Sustainability Committee and we consider his book “Design is the Problem” to be an asset for the student designer as well as the veteran. Download or order the book at: http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/sustainable-design/

Download the full open-source curriculum: http://www.designmba.org/opensource.html.

For more information on GDC Sustainability: http://www.gdc.net/designers/sustainable_design.php

— Valerie Elliott, CGD, CERT PR
National Sustainability Committee Chair