Teaching Global Change to Undergraduates at Universidad Nacional de Colombia for 15 years

Abstract:

First let’s describe the context. Approximately 80% of our students in Medellin major in engineering. In the National University system students can choose freely twenty percent of the credits. Their decisions are made taking into account various reasons. As far as we know the amount of work and the expected grades are factors besides the interest in the topics. Statistics show that there is an even distribution among complementary professional, cross-disciplinary and general interest courses.

Plan B took the name from Lexter Brown book, which was the original inspiration and text. The program expanded with more in depth consideration to a general understanding of climate and climate change science, and to water and energy crises because they are close to my research area. But we consider other global change uses as well, including recycling, loss of biodiversity, food crises, economics of climate change and demographic and social issues. We developed a textbook whose title would translate as “Where is the Globe heading?” that refers to a usual saying during Christmas time in relation to candle balloons popular at that time of the year that children and teen-agers try to catch. The expression reflects the need for predictions, call for action, but also acknowledges that chance is a factor to consider. I believe it summarizes well the content of the course.

The class meets in a large auditorium with 250 sits. We moved from the usual size room of about 50 because of the large demand during registration. This forced us to adjust the methodology, but our evaluation is that such a large audience is worthwhile. Student’s feedbacks at the end of the semester confirm this with very good rating and general comments.

Besides crude diagnostics of the problems based on data and science we always make an effort to present solutions. For instance there is ample consideration to renewal energy technologies. Globalization is also a theme of the course, there are local actions but in particular curbing of greenhouse gas emissions needs global actions.

We need that this kind of efforts spread to many campuses around the world and need to share experiences to take advantage of globalization.