As the deadline for the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development approaches, international educators are actively looking for ways to implement and assess progress on United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For senior international officers and scholar-practitioners in the areas of International Education Leadership or Education Abroad, the SDGs have become far more than a buzzword.
Created in 2015, the 17 SDGs are interconnected, especially as they relate to people, the planet, and prosperity. As we all work to promote SDG 4, Quality Education, it is worth considering how the SDGs may be used beyond the scope of executive leadership and student and staff mobility. The urgency of meeting the goals presented by the SDGs is, of course, a call to action for all international educators who work collaboratively to internationalize their universities. The SDGs offer an opportunity for international educators to collaborate around curriculum, research, and other activities of their universities as they relate to the SDGs, and to tell the story of the impact this work has on global communities. This may be used for rankings, recruitment, and the pursuit of furthering partnerships among other things.
In education abroad, the Forum for Education Abroad and the STARs network have resources and metrics to align the SDGs with work in that area of the field. The Times Higher Education Ranking for the universities pursuing sustainable development goals in 2024 is another excellent resource to understand universities contributions to deliver on the UN SDGs. Several examples of excellence in these efforts are illustrated in a NAFSA Trends and Insights article regarding Sustainability in International Higher Education: Strategic Alignment with the UN SDGs. In addition, the SDGs have been embedded into the mission statements and strategies of some universities due in part to work by senior international officers and others. However, this work is lacking in other areas and there is opportunity to do more. Expanding the scope of the SDGs as it relates to major facets of how we deliver education for sustainable development, conduct and publish research, and empower students and scholars to take those skill sets into future employment will ultimately determine which universities are more successful than others in the long-term as we work to combat the multiple and complex crises facing today's global world.
SDGs in the Curriculum: Education for Sustainable Development
To achieve global learning outcomes for student learning, many institutions have incorporated what UNESCO calls Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) learning into the curriculum. ESD empowers students to develop competencies to raise awareness and knowledge that enable them to take on global issues like poverty or climate change and transform the way they act and think through what they learn. In the classroom, education systems and pedagogies can be modified to incorporate sustainable practices into all facets of undergraduate and graduate education to create a holistic, interdisciplinary, and systems-based approach that bridges partnerships between different sectors of society.
These critical challenges are the same problems students will face when they graduate and begin their careers. Ultimately, ESD brings a workforce training lens to classroom learning. If international education practitioners are looking for a practical starting point to internationalize the curriculum, the ESD approach towards learning the SDGs is a tangible first step. However, ESD is not the only approach towards holistic learning. To push the concept of knowledge transfer and enact change, research on the implementation of the SDGs is also needed.
SDGs in Research
As many institutions consider how to engage with the SDGs, one way to begin is to create a system of mapping existing faculty research that relates to the SDGs as well as mapping specific research output towards each goal. SDG mapping initiatives are already in place at many universities and colleges with others joining that effort. The SDG Transformation Center shows research by country and institution related to each SDG. Beyond recognizing existing efforts, this resource provides opportunities for institutions with similarly aligned strengths to identify potential partners to further research on the SDGs. Sustainability reporting on the amount of grant funding, publications, and other research metrics can help a university tell a story that humanizes the work around the SDGs. Such narratives are powerful in helping international educators and partners expand the scope of such work as they consider the student experience in the classrooms, labs, and future outcomes post-graduation.
SDGs in Career Services
For ESD to be impactful, combining what students learn in the classroom or the research lab into a transferable skill set that helps implement the agenda of the SDGs into their future work can have a significant impact globally. Some pioneering universities are already doing work in this space. A recent example is the Career Center at Tufts University which has partnered with its Office of Sustainability to create a dashboard outlining opportunities and experiences for students and the larger university community related to Environmental Affairs and Sustainability. This partnership highlights how curricular and cocurricular experiences come together to help students identify career opportunities aligned with ESD.
Get Involved
Investing time and energy into the SDGs can reap significant rewards to institutions of higher education and for international educators. It can help create multifaceted partnerships in terms of academic programs, international research and development, and more. Here are more ways you can get involved:
1. Read Global Goals, Global Education: Advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
2. Support Climate Action Network for International Educators (CANIE)
3. Engage with NAFSA' Teaching, Learning and Scholarship Knowledge Community
4. Follow the NAFSA United Nations Special Interest Group
5. Join the NAFSA Sustainability Special Interest Group
Learn more on NAFSA's Sustainability efforts at: https://www.nafsa.org/sustainability