Teaching Sustainability Competencies: Comparing Interdisciplinary Approaches at NYU and Lingnan

This paper explores how interdisciplinary pedagogies and curricula can train sustainability competencies by comparing the practices and philosophies of two undergraduate major programs: Global Liberal Studies (GLS) at New York University (USA) and Global Development and Sustainability (GDS) at Lingnan University (Hong Kong). The analysis draws from three sources of information. First, the program structures and coursework of the two programs reveal the strategic alignments and contrasting methods employed to achieve common goals. Second, interviews with GLS' chairs of the Sustainability, Health, and the Environment and the Politics, Rights, and Development concentrations and with other key GLS faculty and adminis-trators show the developmental trajectory, theoretical underpinnings, and practical tensions embedded in GLS' approach to sustainability education. Third, student work and feedback in both programs are mined to investigate student perception, thematic range, and curricular effectiveness vis-a-vis sustainability competencies.

Insights from these three information sources are correlated to a range of pedagogical approaches. These approaches include training in interdiscipli-narity, design thinking, entrepreneurship, global consciousness, and prima-ry research. Critical comparison of the curricular options, study-abroad pathways, and experiential learning opportunities of the two programs inter-rogate the effectiveness of these mechanisms in developing student capa-bilities a range of sustainability domains. These domains in turn serve as the foundation of integration between the academic and the practical, across different skill types and in different subject areas. The efficacy of such integration demonstrates how a foundation in the humanities and social sciences, which play a prominent role in both programs, can foster multi-di-mensional competencies within sustainability education.