Sonatas for Sustainability: How musical training imparts important qualities and skills for sustainability

By Chrissie Bausch

Sustainability addresses urgent, multi-scalar problems that cut across social, economic, and environmental domains, have long-term implications, and high potential for damage (1). Sustainability researchers and educators are continually discussing the content of and approach to sustainability education. They agree that it must foster a unique set of skills and qualities, including creativity, empathy, system analysis, interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration. All of these skills are developed and fostered in musical instruction, which suggests that music can contribute to sustainability education. … Continue Reading

Factors that Influence the Exit Rates of Sustainability Science: A Graduate Student’s Perspective

By Colin Kunzweiler

Sustainability has been called both a buzzword and the issue of our age, but the field’s explosive growth demonstrates that it is also an “infectious” concept and field. Through a population model that included states of susceptibility, exposure and infectiousness (Figure 1), two authors recently explored individuals’ introduction to and progression within the emerging discipline of sustainability science (1). … Continue Reading

President Crow: American Research Universities Must Lead Our Emergence from the Stone Age

By Michael M. Crow

During the past few years many of us may have confronted the disturbing realization that the standard operating procedures of our contemporary culture often fall short of the mark or even produce entirely unintended consequences.  The near-meltdown of global economic markets and our faltering efforts to revive the economy, to consider but one scenario among many, offer stark evidence that we seem to be grappling with the escalating complexities of the present and future stuck resolutely in the mindset of the past.  This is to say nothing about our success in shaping a world that in all likelihood cannot sustain our long-term enhancements in wealth generation and, more generally, quality of life for humanity.  Given the apparent limitations in our knowledge matched with our overwhelming hubris as well as capacity to exercise brute force, and there is only one possible conclusion:  as a species we are still mired in the final decades of the Stone Age.

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