The University of Alberta’s commitment to education for the SDGs—for university students, and for the wider community

Since they were established in 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become the global blueprint for guiding nations to a more prosperous, peaceful and environmentally secure future. 

To ensure students understand and can contribute to the SDGs, the University of Alberta has committed to meaningful SDG-related education that spans faculties and departments across the university and is relevant and applicable to all students.

In fact, the university has made sustainability one of the five pillars of its Institutional Strategic Plan, which contains an objective to “integrate sustainability into teaching, learning, research, and outreach in ways that foster critical, interdisciplinary, long-term systems thinking on sustainability.” 

The University of Alberta Sustainability Council has a mandate to deepen sustainability education, research and scholarship at the university, and this mandate includes the SDGs.

To that end, the Sustainability Council has launched several sustainability courses that are open to undergraduate students in any curriculum. One of these courses—SUST 202 - Global Sustainable Development and the SDGs—covers the evolution of development, sustainable development and the SDGs. The Sustainability Council also hosts freely-available information and learning material about the SDGs on its website. 

But the Sustainability Council is not the only campus group spearheading learning for the SDGs. The university’s School of Public Health has integrated SDG education into its degree programs, and instructors are independently choosing to use the SDGs in their curriculums. The University of Alberta International (UAI), a unit that aims to offer students the benefits of a globalized learning environment, incorporates the SDGs into its work with students and the public. 

SDG education for the wider community

The University of Alberta has also committed to SDG education in the wider community by having dedicated outreach educational activities for community members, including alumni, local residents and displaced people.

The Sustainability Council’s Lecture Series invites speakers from across the university and beyond to discuss topics related to the SDGs. These lectures are free to attend and are often hosted online, or both online and in person, making them accessible for Edmonton’s residents and people around the globe. 

Future Energy Systems, a university research group and national leader in energy research,  organizes online lectures as well as visits to classrooms in Edmonton. These visits cover energy topics that relate to the SDGs. 

UAI runs an annual International Week, which includes speakers, workshops and other events that focus on the SDGs, all of which are open to alumni, the local community, displaced people and refugees. Likewise, the Sustainability Council hosts Sustainability Awareness Week, a week-long event series that contains programming which invites attendees to think about the SDGs and includes events that are open to the public. 

The University of Alberta also regularly invites speakers and hosts events, often free of charge, that are geared towards its alumni, and general audiences, and contain SDG-related content.