Key Facts

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Institutional Stewardship Initiatives

JSGS Research Chair in Métis Governance and Policy

The Métis Nation-Saskatchewan (MN-S), USask and Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy (JSGS) have combined support for the establishment of a JSGS Research Chair in Métis Governance and Policy – the first of its kind in Canada. In addition to the Research Chair the combined support will include scholarships and internship opportunities for verified Métis students and the development of a Métis governance training program which will all support and enhance the genuine decision-making authority of MN-S by exploring ways in which governance and the policymaking process can be guided and informed by Métis culture, values and tradition.

Sustainability Strategy

USask’s 2021-2030 Sustainability Strategy was developed to advance sustainable development outcomes in teaching, learning, research, operations, and outreach.

Sustainability Teaching Strategy

The Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL) offers specific supports through the Sustainability Teaching Strategy, which seeks to integrate sustainability into learning outcomes and assess sustainability competencies across all USask courses and programs. GMCTL provides open access resources such as “Embedding Sustainable Development Goals in Teaching and Learning” and “Cultivating Change: A Prairie Guide to Sustainability Teaching and Learning Practices”, and provides examples, templates, and videos to assist faculty in integrating sustainability competencies into teaching practice. 

Sustainability Faculty Fellows

The Sustainability Faculty Fellowship, organized through the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning (GMCTL) engages to support faculty in designing, instructing, and assessing in ways that build student competencies for sustainability.

EcoHack

EcoHack is an annual sustainability-themed hackathon hosted by the Office of Sustainability. This event partners with local government, businesses, and NGOs to engage the local community in education, discussion, and collaborative solution-finding related to an SDG. Participants are provided options for topics within the SDGs and asked to work in multi-disciplinary teams with community partners to generate viable solutions to a problem of their choosing. Teams are asked to incorporate social, economic, and environmental outcomes into their solutions. Participants complete their hackathon projects which are then presented to and judged by members of the community to shortlist the final presentations. Students and faculty also have ongoing opportunities to contribute to community engaged education projects for sustainability, to support knowledge and empowerment for the SDGs in the community. Students can receive course credit for this work.

School of Environment and Sustainability

USask’s School of Environment and Sustainability (SENS) offers over 50 courses that address sustainability. These courses form an Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability, eight Graduate Certificates, two thesis-based graduate programs (master’s and PhD in Environment and Sustainability), and three professional (course-based) master’s programs (Master of Sustainability, with streams in Energy Security or Regenerative Sustainability; Master of Water Security). Many of these courses can also be taken as electives or to fulfil certain program requirements by any student in any USask program.

Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability

The Undergraduate Certificate in Sustainability offered through SENS helps set future graduates apart by concentrating on sustainability-related concepts and practices. Students will gain an understanding of how to integrate human-environmental systems within our current reality and how to critically evaluate sustainability efforts. This certificate works well in an interdisciplinary context; consider adding it to a degree in computing science, business, or engineering for maximum flexibility.

SDG Week at USask

Each March, USask hosts our annual SDG Week, during which leaders from government, industry, NGOs and the USask community came together to promote and discuss the action towards the SDGs.

In 2023, SDG Week featured:

  • Two Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) online panels (The Critical Importance of Measuring SDG Progress on Campuses and Embedding Sustainability into Teaching Practices).
  • The launch of Cultivating Change: A Prairie Guide to Sustainability Teaching and Learning Practices, the Sustainability Faculty Fellows open access book.
  • A student workshop on future power supply essentials with SaskPower.
  • An SDG Multipler Training workshop.
  • EcoMixer, an open sustainability networking event that also featured the announcement of the year's EcoHack winners.
  • An International Women's Day presentation titled The Impacts of Climate Change on Indigenous and Racialized Women: A Racialized, Antiracist Woman's Decolonial Transformative Learning Reflections on Climate Change Adaptation.
  • A Global Café Speaker Series guest lecture by Jonathan Pedneault, Co-Chair of the Federal Green Party.
  • A silent disco co-hosted by the USSU to generate donations for the Saskatoon Food Bank.

Local Action, Global Impact

The Saskatchewan Education Alliance Group on International Research, Development and the Sustainable Development Goals is a working group established between USask, other Saskatchewan postsecondary institutions, and the Government of Saskatchewan to advance sustainable development and research for the province. A virtual event titled Local Action, Global Impact: Building Awareness on the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Saskatchewan’s Postsecondary Education was held in the spring of 2022 to facilitate discussions between the government and postsecondary in Saskatchewan to raise awareness on the importance of the SDGs and advance collaboration across Canada.

The event featured:

  • Words of welcome by:
    • the Honourable Gene Makowsky, Minister of Advanced Education, Government of Saskatchewan,
    • Ms. Maki Katsuon-Hayashikawa, Director of the Division for Education 2030, UNESCO, and
    • Dr. Meghna Ramaswamy, Director of International Office, University of Saskatchewan.
  • Presentations by:
    • Mr. Ayman Chowdhury, MScSM, Head of Secretariat, Global Compact Network Canada
      • Role of Social Dialogue in fostering stability and inclusive growth (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth)
    • Dr. Peter Wells, Chief of Higher Education, UNESCO
      • Is quality higher education in the eye of the beholder? Marrying a heterogeneous
        approach with the common 2030 Agenda (SDG 4: Quality Education)
    • Mr. Olivier Bullion, MA, Director of the SDG Unit, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)
      • Moving Forward Together: Canada’s 2030 Agenda National Strategy
    • Dr. Stefan Jungcurt, Lead, SDG Indicators and Data, Tracking Progress, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
      • Leaving no Canadian behind. Challenges and Opportunities in monitoring
        progress towards SDG 10 (SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities)
    • Mr. Jon Beale, MSc, Manager, Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN)
      • Target 17.17: Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil
        society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of
        partnerships (SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
    • Ms. Kami DePape, Vice President of Academics at Parkland College; Ms. Melanie Roberts, Director of Programs, North West College; Ms. Keleah Ostrander, Director of Learner Services and Adult Basic Education, Great Plains College; and Ms. Bobbi Gray, Vice President of Academics, Cumberland College
      • A Rural Saskatchewan Approach to Holistic Education (SDG 4: Quality Education)
    • Dr. Martin Gaal, Professor of Political Science, University of Saskatchewan
      • Higher Education, Internationalization, and building a global economy for
        everybody (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth)
    • Dr. Margot Hulbert, Professor, Canada Research Chair, University of Regina
      • Addressing climate change requires addressing inequality: SDG 10 and living
        within planetary boundaries (SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities)
    • Mr. Thevi Pather, Associate Vice President of International, Saskatchewan Polytechnic
      • Embracing SDG #17 through a decolonization lens (SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals)

TRANSECTS International Workshop

TRANSECTS held an international workshop in September of 2022 to share and discuss progress toward the goals; the workshop’s report highlights progress on how USask and NGO partners are working to create good practices for sustainability education.

Research Institutes, Centres, & Projects

Global Institute for Food Security

The Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) works with partners to discover, develop and deliver innovative solutions for the production of globally sustainable food. Serving as ‘agriculture’s innovation catalyst,’ GIFS is connecting the agri-food ecosystem, advancing innovation and bridging the gap to commercialization to deliver resilient and sustainable food security for all stakeholders.

Global Institute for Water Security

The Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan is the top water resources research institute in Canada and one of the most advanced hydrology research centres in the world. GIWS is dedicated to:

  1. Protecting water resources: helping protect our precious freshwater resources needed for the world's growing demand for sustainable food production.
  2. Mitigating water-related disasters: mitigating the risk of water-related disasters such as floods, droughts, and fires.
  3. Anticipating global change: predicting and forecasting extremes of global change through the use of advanced remote sensing and modelling techniques.
  4. Co-creating research with Indigenous Peoples: co-creating research and braiding Traditional Knowledge with modern science to empower Indigenous communities in protecting healthy waters, people, and ecosystems.

 

Global Institute for Energy, Mines and Society

Saskatchewan Polytechnic, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Regina signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in December, 2023 to advance collaboration and partnership in mining and energy. The MOU establishes a framework for collaboration on a new Saskatchewan-based institution called the Global Institute for Energy, Mines and Society (GIEMS). GIEMS aims to better meet industry needs by having state-of-the-art research and development in place. It also will provide training and experiential learning to help build the provincial workforce in the areas of skilled trades, engineers and scientists.

College of Education's Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Change Project

The USask College of Education’s Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Change (MECCE) Project is an international partnership initiative to support understanding of quality climate communication and education (CCE) in policy and practice, global data for country benchmarking, target setting, and progress in quantity of CCE provision. There are over 100 global stakeholders involved including IPCC, UNESCO, UNFCCC, and UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. The MECCE Project has developed an unprecedented global database of global climate change communication and education (CCE) to support international and national policy making, education, communication, and civil society sector decision-making. The Project's case studies, country profiles, and global indicators are available in an open access format on an interactive data platform.

Sustainability Education Research Institute

The Sustainability Education Research Institute, a research centre in USask’s College of Education, houses the Sustainability and Education Policy Network (SEPN). SEPN specializes in large-scale comparative research examining sustainability uptake in policy and practice, how sustainability uptake relates to other priorities in policy and practice, influences on the development and enactment of sustainability policy and practice, and the relationships between practice and existing policy. SEPN is an internationally recognized leader in sustainability and climate change education policy research, providing researchers and policy makers with a framework to collaborate on policy research to increase engagement with sustainability and climate change in education in policy and practice. In 2023, SEPN published the final reports from its flagship project, an analysis of sustainability in education policy and practice across the Canadian formal primary, secondary, and higher education systems.

TRANSECTS

USask’s Transdisciplinary Education Collaboration for Transformations in Sustainability (TRANSECTS) is an international collaborative partnership of researchers, practitioners, students, and leaders from universities, UNESCO Biosphere Reserves, NGOs, and Indigenous communities in Canada, South Africa, and Germany that conduct research, develop educational resources, and create a community of practice for re-envisioning how sustainability education is developed and delivered. TRANSECTS offers students, who provide volunteer governance, educational programming and annual fully funded Transdisciplinary International Learning Laboratories: international and intercultural learning experiences that build skills in sustainability research and practice. The program is designed to prepare graduates to be sustainability change makers, offering unparalleled opportunities for intercultural learning through shared international experiences and comparative analysis across the Global North and South.

Saskatchewan Education Alliance Group on International Research, Development, and the Sustainable Development Goals

The Saskatchewan Education Alliance Group on International Research, Development and the Sustainable Development Goals is a working group established with the Government of Saskatchewan to advance sustainable development and research for the province. A virtual event titled Local Action, Global Impact: Building Awareness on the UN Sustainable Development Goals in Saskatchewan’s Postsecondary Education was held to raise awareness on the importance of the SDGs and advance collaboration across Canada.

Research Impact

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Sample Courses

Negotiations and consultations are central to managing relations among the multiple actors in unsustainable development initiatives including Indigenous and non-Indigenous governments and organizations, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. This course introduces students to key issues in consultation and negotiations and offers practice through a negotiation simulation exercise.

This course explains the evolution of sustainability, including the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and introduces students to threshold concepts relevant to the science and practice of sustainability.

This course examines how societal institutions and policy shape the role played by co-operatives in the economy, and how co-operative practices and innovations have in turn shaped these institutions and policy. Combining theoretical insights from the areas of institutions, economics, organizational behaviour, law and policy with case studies of co-operative organizations, the course allows students to develop their knowledge of the actions that both the state and co-operatives have undertaken, and provides students with a conceptual framework within which these actions can be viewed.

This seminar explores the contribution that interdisciplinary theory and research make toward understanding international cooperation and conflict with special attention to the role and evolution of military and peace interventions in global society. Topics will include war and peace, global community, humanitarianism, militarism, and peacebuilding as well as an examination of the roles of international organizations and non-governmental organizations in international conflict and cooperation.

For a full listing of related courses, please visit the Office of Sustainability's sustainablity course inventory.

Key STARS Reporting Areas