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Engaged learning and enterprise through the 'Ecoversity': Meeting community and global sustainability concerns through university engagement
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Engaged learning and enterprise through the 'Ecoversity': Meeting community and global sustainability concerns through university engagement

Steven Garlick and Julie M Matthews
Australasian Journal of University Community Engagement, Vol.3(2), pp.32-45
Australian Universities Community Engagement Alliance (AUCEA) National Conference, 2009 (Whyalla, Australia, 08-Jul-2009–10-Jul-2009)
2009
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Abstract

Other Environmental Sciences ecoversity university engagement
Education has provided little leadership and few conceptual tools to assist us to better understand our place in leading the world towards a more sustainable future. We continue to educate society in ways oblivious to the mounting crisis of unsustainability (Orr, 1992) and rely instead on institutionalism, managerialism, cerebral capitalism and neoliberal constructs which have proven spectacularly disastrous in dealing with these critical matters. While universities have taken contradictory roles at various points through time, they have invariably reflected and challenged the culture of the day, tolerated diverse viewpoints, generated new ideas and inculcated wisdom. To do otherwise would be to produce 'people who will spend life locked in the prison of an untutored, unquestioning mind', and is 'probably the best way to ensure that catastrophe triumphs' It makes sense therefore that universities be at the centre of efforts to deal with sustainability matters.

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