Green Launchpad | Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Green Launchpad

After pursuing one of her BHAGs, former and founding Director of our MA in Sustainable Design program Cindy Gilbert is now Senior Project Officer with VentureWell. Congratulations, Cindy!

One of her upcoming projects: VentureWell is offering the interactive + hands-on workshop Green LaunchPad Educators Workshop this fall (Oct 16+17) in Boston, MA to train faculty how to integrate sustainability frameworks and principles (e.g. LCA, whole systems thinking, etc) into their curricula. Jeremy Faludi (now teaching at TU Delft) will be leading the workshop and Cindy be facilitating. Ben Linder (from Olin College) will join as a guest speaker to cover sustainable innovation and venture development.

According to the event website:

Engineering, design, and business are not just disciplines to teach, they are disciplines that build the material world we live in. Our students can build technologies and businesses that benefit the world and humanity rather than harming them.

This interactive workshop will equip you with the knowledge and skills to integrate sustainable invention and innovation curriculum and practices into your courses, whether they are existing core courses or sustainability-specific ones.  You will leave the workshop ready to teach basic and intermediate sustainability principles at the undergraduate or graduate level.

Some of the concrete actionable student exercises that you’ll come away with include: 

  • sustainable design strategies
  • metrics for measuring environmental and social impacts (including basic life cycle assessment and eco-labels)
  • material choice
  • energy effectiveness
  • systems thinking
  • green business model design
  • UN Sustainable Development Goals
  • pedagogical tools to help students work in groups
  • tips to help students work with companies or other external stakeholders

If you want to dive even deeper into how you might engage sustainable design in your teaching, take a look at our fully online MA in Sustainable Design program!

Categories
Faculty Focus
Published on
September 02, 2019

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The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) acknowledges it is located on traditional, ancestral, and contemporary lands of Indigenous people. This is the ancestral homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people, who were forcibly exiled from the land because of aggressive and persistent settler colonialism. We recognize that this place has a complex and layered history. As a community dedicated to creativity, MCAD is committed to ongoing efforts to support and advocate for American Indian Nations and peoples.


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