Course syllabus

ENM035 Assessing sustainability: Assignments lp2 HT20 (7.5 hp)

The course is offered by the division of Environmental Systems Analysis at the department of Technology Management and Economics

Contact details

Prof Sverker Molander, sverker.molander@chalmers.se, +4631-772 2169 examiner, lecturer, supervisor of individual assignments

 Madelene Ostvald, madelene.ostwald@chalmers.se, supervisor of individual assignments

 Seshadri Srinivasa Raghavan (Sesha), sessri@chalmers.se, +4631-772 1684, supervisor of individual assignments

 Julianne de Castro Oliveira, julianne.oliveira@chalmers.se, +4631-772 2023 supervisor of individual assignments

Course aims

The course deals with the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development and introduces various approaches to the assessment of them.

The aim of this course is to develop student’s abilities to assess the connections between human activities and environmental and sustainability problems in order to underpin interventions by various actors. This is done by reading about, reflecting on and discussing different sustainability, and strategic environmental, assessment approaches, regarding their process and content.

The course pays specific attention to the role of indicators used, the usefulness and legitimacy of assessment processes and their outcomes in relation to stakeholders, sustainability and the complexity of the system in focus.

 The aim is also to develop the students’ academic writing and communication skills and support a reflection on their personal knowledge and experiences. The overall aim is to support the development of skills increasing students’ abilities to contribute to a sustainability assessment.

Schedule

TimeEdit

See also below "Course summary:" - this schedule overrules the TimeEdit schedule! Be aware of seminars 10th, 16th, 17th, 20th, 23rd, 24th, 26th, 30th of November 1st, 3rd of December. More info to come.

Course literature

See file "Course literature" in module "All you need to know"

Course design

The course s structured in 

- a series of lectures, to introduce various concepts and procedures

- a series of seminars, where interesting literature is discussed, which requires the reading of the seminar texts (often scientific articles), submitting questions before the seminar and actively participating in the seminars that will be performed in smaller groups

- the writing and presentation of an individual assignment covering a specific type os sustainability assessment

Learning objectives and syllabus

After the course the students should have

• the ability to significantly contribute to the performance of a sustainability/strategic environmental assessment
• the ability to identify the various parts of the sustainability assessment, or the strategic environmental assessment, process in a particular situation, including, but not limited to, assessment scoping, setting baselines, construction of alternatives, identification of indicators, reporting and follow-up 
• reflected on the role as environmental scientists/engineers in the societal context of SA, SEA, environmental problem perception and environmental management
• an academic awareness of the many perspectives, dimensions and scales, of sustainability issues in relation to various actors´ perspectives such as g. scientific, social, economic, juridical and political, and scales such as local, regional, national and global.
• the ability to individually outline, and write a scientific report
• the ability to individually search and critically assess written sources of relevance for a given writing task
• the ability of a scientific handling of literature references
• further developed verbal communication skills for presenting results in relation to different stakeholders

Examination form

Examination is in the form of an active participation in the seminar series, a pass of the Academic writing in-course exam/quiz, submitting and performing presentations of individual assignments to the mid-term seminar and to the final seminar.