Professors of the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) decided to transform the curricula of their courses so that they respond to climate action, in order to devise solutions that contribute to communities, as well as put theory into practice.
During the Second Symposium on Climate Education and Society –held this week–, professor Wilmer Rivera De Jesus He reported that, to design his course syllabus, he analyzed which elements of the Sustainable Development Goals They could be applied to the curricular theme and how they could be worked on as solutions.
“The idea is to promote, through education, that even with the climate crisis that is being experienced in Puerto Rico and the world there are solutions, from the individual and collective”he said, in reference to the objective of “Alliances to achieve objectives.”
In collaboration with the Yaguazo CorridorRivera De Jesús students from the course “Climate Change and Caribbean Ecological Systems” developed analysis of the environmental conditions in the Ciénaga Las Cucharillas Natural Reserve and biological analyzes of the populations of black cobana – a tree exclusive to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic – that take place in the reserve.
The students presented their findings with the purpose of promote environmental monitoring and recovery of habitat biodiversitythreatened by environmental changes.
“The data they have (to generate) for a note becomes more than that, because they become solutions that the communities are going to use to carry out that rehabilitation project in Cucharillas”said Rivera De Jesús.
Likewise, he highlighted the use of the CURE approach (Authentic Research Experiences in Undergraduate Courses, in Spanish), a teaching tool that seeks to make the scientific research process more accessible to students and the educator.
For her part, the teacher Natalia Santos Orozco maintained that “crisis experiences confirm the need to build a university model that promotes training for the defense of the common and the care (of nature)”.
The panel also included the participation by Joaquín Argüelloof the University of New Mexico.