Energy, Environment and Resources Center

Jack Barkenbus, Executive Director

Center For Clean Products and Clean Technologies

Gary A. Davis, Director

Office of Communications and Publications

David Brill, Director

Center for Geography and Environmental Education

Rosalyn McKeown-Ice, Director

Oak Ridge Technology Research and Development Program

Sheila Webster, Director

Systems Development Institute

Donald Alvic, Director

Pro-Dialogue

Mary R. English and David L. Feldman, Directors

Water Resources Research Center

Tim Gangaware, Associate Director

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Highlights and Initiatives is written and edited by Constance Griffith <cbgriffith@utk.edu>.

For more information call Gail Farris at 865-974-4251 or write to EERC, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134.

Visit our Web site at: http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/

WELCOME. The EERC is pleased to introduce new staff member Don Huisingh, a clean products and pollution prevention specialist, who comes to us from Lund University in Sweden. Huisingh will be working with EERC’s Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies to build an international dimension within its research program. Huisingh will continue to serve as editor in chief for the Journal of Clean Production, a quarterly review of the experiences and research among government agencies, research institutes, and industry.

AWARDS. Larry Schoff, a senior research associate with EERC’s Systems Development Institute, recently received the "Energy Champion" award for outstanding service in helping the nation’s schools become more energy efficient. Representatives of the Department of Energy and the Rebuild America program honored Schoff at the Rebuild America National Forum in Atlanta in May. Schoff serves as K-12 market sector manager and technical advisor for the Department of Energy’s Rebuild America program.

The Communicator Awards organization recently presented its highest award to the staff of Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy. Forum earned the Crystal Award of Excellence in the Magazine/Educational Institution category for its Winter 2000 issue. Forum also received the Crystal Award of Excellence in the Writing/Magazine category for "The End Game," by John R. Hardwig, professor and head of UT’s Philosophy Department. Associate Director Dennis McCarthy is Forum’s editor in chief, and Elise Lequire serves as managing editor.

PROJECTS. For the fifth year, EERC’s Water Resources Research Center is coordinating Knox County’s Adopt-A-Watershed Program for the Water Quality Forum. Joining the program for the first time are 10 teachers who participated in a four-day WRRC workshop in June. In addition, WRRC will supervise a 10-member AmeriCorps team to assist the teachers. The program will involve more than 2000 students from 14 Knox County middle and high schools and cover nine watersheds. Four of the AmeriCorps members are concurrently conducting their student internship for UT’s Master of Science Program in Education.

PRESENTATIONS. Research Leader Mary English recently presented results of the National Research Council (NRC) report, "Long-term Institutional Management of U.S. Department of Energy Legacy Waste Sites," in Vanderbilt University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar Series. The report was prepared by an NRC study committee vice-chaired by English.

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Each Highlights and Initiatives page presents an in-depth look at one of EERC's projects or activities. This edition features "Lessons on Sustainable Living," which introduces a Web-based model that may help guide the world toward a sustainable future.

Education for sustainable development, a concept whose time has come, flourishes on the World Wide Web. • BY LISA BYERLEY GARY

WHILE MOST OF US are focused on the here and now, Rosalyn McKeown, director of the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Center for Geography and Environmental Education (CGEE), focuses on the future. In fact, her work with CGEE, a subunit of UT’s Energy Environment and Resources Center, revolves around the "elusive and large concept" of sustainability. 

McKeown, along with a few collaborators, may well lead people on a path to worldwide sustainability with her Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Toolkit—a simple, adaptable, accessible, and inexpensive education package.

Some experts say one reason the concept of sustainability fails to flourish worldwide is because teachers don’t have access to models that could help them include sustainability in their classrooms. ESD, according to the Toolkit’s introduction, "calls for giving people knowledge and skills for lifelong learning to help them find new solutions to their environmental, economic, and social issues." In her quest to nail down a script for this process, McKeown enlisted the help of colleagues, among them, Chuck Hopkins.

"What was overwhelming to me is the notion that there are 59 million teachers in the world," says Hopkins, who is from York University in Toronto and chairs the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) efforts to reorient teacher education to address sustainability. "How do you retrain that many people—and with no budget?" 

Instead of retraining, they decided to build on teachers’ strengths and tap into their expertise. McKeown began to build her Toolkit by visioning sustainability and asking teachers to think of sustainability in a local context. "Education for sustainable development, if it is to be effective, must be locally relevant and culturally appropriate," says McKeown. 

And McKeown’s tenacity in gathering information and putting it on the bottom shelf where everybody can reach it paid off. Between February and September of 2000, the first seven months of the Toolkit’s life online, its resources were accessed nearly 19,000 times, with 4,000 hits in the first eight weeks alone.

Last fall in Toronto, a gathering of officials from 24 nations used the Toolkit to "get everyone on the same page" concerning teacher education. It is now required reading for some 360,000 pre-service teachers in India. And so far, McKeown has granted permission to translate the documents into eight languages.

The Toolkit’s documents, available in HTML and PDF formats, are designed to download quickly even on older and slower computers. "The magic of the Toolkit," says Hopkins, "is that it’s readable. It makes sense. It addresses the issues. The Toolkit says ‘here are specific things you can do,’ in plain language. It offers hope."•

For more information, contact Rosalyn McKeown, CGEE, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-1880. Check out the ESD Toolkit at <http://www.esdtoolkit.org>.