Crow, Michael M. “Organizing Teaching and Research to Address the Grand Challenge of Sustainable Development.” BioScience. Vol. 60, No. 7. (July/August 2010): pp. 488-489.
Michael M. Crow is the president of Arizona State University. The author recognizes the need for reform in the methods practiced by universities to educate students about sustainability. He calls for greater inter-disciplinary classes, as well as an overall “institutional culture of sustainability” on campus. His intended audience is administrators at other universities, who he hopes will adopt ASU’s approach to the problem. Crow is extremely biased. He uses the article to boast greatly about the programs set up at ASU to promote sustainability. He greatly exaggerates the degree to which other universities are oblivious to or ineffectively teaching about sustainability. I do not believe his School of Sustainability, with its interdisciplinary classes, is as “vanguard” as he claims it to be. Seeing as how this class is interdisciplinary, the article relates well to both our class, as well as our project concerning sustainability on campus.
What data could you use to assess his claims? Why are they unbelievable? Does he provide any evidence?