Second Nature - North America

Second Nature works to help colleges and universities integrate sustainability as a core component of all educational curriculum. This embrace of EFS is meant to extend beyond the classroom itself; Second Nature envisions the campus as a fully integrated community that models social and biological sustainability itself and in its interdependence with the local, regional, and global community.

Central to Second Nature's approach to EFS is the development of a far-reaching web of like-minded individuals and institutions of higher education - a network. The strategy involves enabling these network members to access available resources to "ask the right questions" and pursue answers by learning from the work of, and collaborating with, others.

Specifically, Second Nature established the Education for Sustainability Western Network in 2001 to act as a coordinating body to foster collaboration among individuals and institutions from the United States and Canada. The Network works with faculty, students, staff and administrators at institutions of higher education to help transform the campus experience into one that is itself more sustainable. The Network coordinates one or more workshops each year focussing on curriculum change, sustainable design, climate change, and a number of other topics. Other activities include a newsletter, website (featuring a resource centre), speakers bureau, and an awards programme.

Second Nature's involvement in the Network is as follows: it partners with Network members to co-sponsor workshops around the region, develops sustainability initiatives that actively involve students, works with partner institutions to develop curriculum initiatives, promotes and coordinate opportunities where Network members can benefit from joint efforts, creates and supports ways for Network partners to access and share existing knowledge, works with other sustainability consortia and NGOs to facilitate partnerships and collaborations, and helps make the Network financially self-sustaining.

Environment, Sustainable Development, Partnership.

Due to funding constraints, Second Nature has evaluated its work from a strategic perspective, closing off some of the areas of focus that formerly defined it. Below are some examples of Second Nature's past initiatives

To begin, Second Nature used a variety of relationship-building exercises and invited guest speakers as part of an effort to bring together groups of educators interested in sustainability issues in their institutions. Multi-year Partnership Workshops were designed to equip leaders from schools with the practical skills and resources needed to catalyse and accelerate sustainability programmes at their institutions. Second Nature and the partnership schools co-designed and facilitated the workshops to serve specific identified needs, including topics such as teaching sustainability across the curriculum, reducing ecological damage on the part of the institutions, and strategies for helping to improve local communities. Regional, On-site, and Best Practices workshops were also held.

Second Nature also focussed on expanding, enhancing, advocating for, and helping build networks of institutions including: Associated Colleges of the South, Historically Black Colleges and Minority Institutions, New Jersey Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability, United Negro College Fund/Building Environmental Stewardship, and West Coast EFS Network.

In the past, Second Nature also offered more extensive web-based resources than it is currently able to, including searchable EFS profiles databases (stories of institutional initiatives), databases of course syllabi, teaching methods, bibliographic references, sustainability profiles, papers and speeches, a calendar of sustainability events, and links to other online resources. A limited number of these materials are available on the current Second Nature website; click here for more details.