Edinburgh Napier University

  Industrial ecology higher education courses and degrees are gaining momentum across the world. However, much can also be done at earlier educational stages to create future generations for which industrial ecology will be an embedded and natural concept. In this regard an opportunity arose for a sustainable educational infrastructure in Colombia. Indeed, Colombia has been adopting green building as a “marketing strategy” to promote sustainable practices into the building sector, and aims to use green schools as educational living learning opportunities. This paper reports on findings from the Rochester school case study. Based on sustainable strategies, Rochester School was certified LEED Gold and has been implementing a “sustainable integrated curriculum” using the infrastructure as a main “living study text”. This pilot project is the first of its kind, which has used an innovative approach in order to establish priorities for integrated and transversal educational projects. The focus is on S2TEM (Sustainability, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) as the main integrated practical learning activities in order to improve students’ sustainable knowledge. As a follow up the educational staff were approached to evaluate how the new curriculum was working and to establish whether significant changes in the students’ knowledge, skills, and attitude could be observed. Through this new approach, sustainable strategies were integrated not only to build and operate a green infrastructure but also, and equally importantly, to implement a living text book in order to make it part of a new sustainable curriculum which allows students, teachers, staff, families and visitors an easy access to learn about sustainability and transform society