Sustainability in Practice

I have long worked in my teaching — particularly my environmental issues course, and now also in the new sustainability in practice course that I piloted in Spring 2026, to engage students where we live and make connections between decision making, policies, and actions to the consequent impacts there may be. I am also committed to including experiential, hands-on learning in my environmental/sustainability courses.

The age of AI and overabundance of life on computers/remote connection makes in-person discussion, exploration and hands-on doing all the more important in my mind.

So, I would love to have the opportunity to be more schooled myself and learn from others how to support students even more in understanding and exercising the power they have to instill change for the better where we live. Teaching and learning about the state of our environment, climate change and all the negative impacts that have come from a consumer rather than citizen prioritized society is really hard. Students (and I) struggle to manage eco/climate anxiety when it all can feel very daunting to address.

This course is aimed to be an exploration, taken on collectively, of both the meaning of and options for sustainability in the context of a variety of the challenges we face (locally, regionally and globally). A number of weeks during the semester we will be travelling together off campus and "into the field" during class time to meet on-site with local actors from non-profit, business, and governmental sectors and learn of the sustainability-related work and approaches of their organizations/initiatives. In some instances, we will also be helping to support some element of their work (e.g., helping install a new part of Grow Ogden's urban "farm"). We will also explore and try out a number of systems geared to supporting and motivating individual level sustainability actions/habits.

I am excited about this class and all that we will learn, consider, discuss, do and share together. Getting out and about as a class to talk and work with folks engaged in sustainability practices, both on campus and in our local area, will, I hope, prove a memorable, and impactful learning experience! [1]

Alice Mulder

Associate Professor Geography & Director Sustainability Practices & Research Center

Anthropology, Geography and Sociology

Weber State University