Taught By:
Margaret Pfeil
Teaching Professor
Department of Theology
Theology and Institute for Social Concerns
University of Notre Dame
Read profile here.
Motivation to Teach Social Action:
I teach a tricampus sustainability course (Notre Dame, St. Mary's College, and Holy Cross College) every fall term, and I'm interested in shaping it toward social action, as students have expressed a deep desire to engage in systemic social change around the climate crisis.
Course Description:
Course Description: This course will address sustainability in the context of the local academic community and its institutions. In conversation with the papal encyclical, Laudato Si’, On Care for Our Common Home, this course will provide students with interdisciplinary opportunities to explore the challenges of sustainability and develop collaborative strategies for making our common campus homes more sustainable. Students will be invited to examine the course materials in conversation with the mission of the Congregation of Holy Cross through immersion at each of the campuses and encounters with professionals whose work impacts sustainability.
This course will also include a community-engaged learning component, in which students will volunteer 2 hours/week through the semester. See the document in our class Google folder, “Tricampus CBL/EL Instructions and Site List Fall 2024” for further details.
Intended Learning Outcomes: The main goal of this course is for students to learn to practice sustainability through community engagement with attention to the spiritual, theological, and ecological dimensions of sustainability. They will learn how sustainability professionals approach problems of sustainable systems and how to engage with professionals as public citizens. More specifically, students will:
- experience and interpret sustainability as a spiritual value in light of the charism of the Congregation of Holy Cross and through a theological lens;
- using Pope Francis’ encyclical letter, Laudato si’, as a guiding thread through the course, naming the dimensions of the ecological crisis and the roots of the crisis and focusing on the journey from technocratic paradigm, throwaway culture, practical relativism, and anthropocentrism toward living integral ecology, considering both the spiritual and physical dispositions and practices entailed by that shift;
- experience and interpret the campuses of Holy Cross, Notre Dame, and Saint Mary’s as ecologically interconnected landscapes;
- analyze energy use on the three campuses from the macro scale of the energy system to the micro scale of the student dorm room;
- analyze the food system on the three campuses from the macro scale of the dining system to the micro scale of the individual student;
- develop the ability to conceptualize community-scale solutions to sustainability problems;
- communicate clearly about sustainability problems and solutions to diverse stakeholders in an academic community.
