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How can students become transformational leaders if they are left alone to grapple with the emotional toll of climate change, preparing for careers while scientists sound the alarm that business as usual is untenable? Ecoanxiety, solastalgia, and climate grief are the affective undercurrents in sustainability and environmental science classrooms. This case study discusses strategies used to support students' emotional well-being in an introductory sustainability class and a co-curricular climate change support group program at Oregon State University. Psychologists and sustainability educators created space for students and faculty to engage in authentic dialogues confronting the emotional uncertainty of the climate crisis and working together to define their roles building a resilient future.

This paper aims to describe a two-stage sustainability curriculum assessment, providing tools and strategies for other faculty to use in implementing their own sustainability assessments.

In the first stage of the five-year curriculum assessment, the authors used an anonymous survey of sustainability faculty and requested data that would verify the survey’s self-reporting: updated sustainability syllabi, and answers to the question, “where have you integrated the three aspects of sustainability – biological systems, social systems, economic systems – into this course?” Finding that the self-reporting results did not match the evidence on the syllabi, the authors interrogated their methods from the faculty workshop trainings for sustainability curriculum transformation.

The authors’ workshops had not provided clear definitions for “sustainability” and the learning outcomes expected in sustainability courses. They had also not addressed the role of transformative pedagogy in teaching a holistic approach to sustainability. The research identified and transcended five key barriers to implementing sustainability curriculum: an over-reliance on faculty volunteers, unclear and unenforced expectations about sustainability implementations, a failure to recognize and circumvent institutional and philosophical barriers to teaching sustainability’s interdisciplinary approach through disciplinary-based curriculum, conceiving of sustainability pedagogy as transmission rather than transformation, and overlooking the ecology of educational systems as nested within the larger sociopolitical environment.

This study confirms the limitations of faculty self-reporting unless augmented with verifiable data.

Sustainability educators can use this research to devise curriculum or program assessment on their campuses: the mixed-methods approach to data collection, the inquiry into sustainability workshop trainings, the elements required on sustainability syllabi for building a coherent sustainability studies program, the resources for practicing a transformative sustainability pedagogy, and the barriers to sustainability implementation along with strategies for surmounting these barriers will all be of use.

This paper explores and combats root causes for an all-too-common disconnection between positive faculty self-assessment and syllabi that do not fully integrate sustainability across the disciplines.

This paper explores the role of accounting in ecological reconstitution and draws attention to the public value as a topic of strategic interest for developing it.

The process of ecological reconstitution described by Latour in the “Politics of Nature” is traced towards a distinct set of accounting practices. These accounting practices, designated here as full-tax accounting, offer indications of the changing shape and role of accounting in ecological renewal.

Full-tax accounting extends the planetary public towards the inclusion of nonhuman planetarians. It establishes matters of care in multimodal accounts and haunts constitutional processes with the spectre of exclusion. Starting with full-tax accounting, public-value accountants emerge as curators of matters of care.

The association of accounting in ecological reconstitution with matters of care highlights the mediating and immersive effects of accounting practice, inviting accounting scholars to explore these effects more systematically.

Accountants need to reconsider their stewardship role in relation to the fundamental uncertainties implied in planetary public-value accounting, support the process of ecological reconstitution by associating themselves with matters of care and develop ethics of exclusion.

Broad alliances among planetary accountants are needed to extend the terms of ecological reconstitution, to gain and preserve attunement to matters of care and defend these attunements, in the atmospheric politics of ecological renewal, against regressive tendencies.

In problematising public value, the paper draws attention to a convergence of interests among scholars in accounting, public sector research and the environmental humanities. It presents a case for planetary accounting in ecological reconstitution that calls for participation from across disciplines, professions, arts and environmental activism.

The purpose of this study is to find whether undergraduate students in the first discipline-based class can attain flow state while researching. Despite its widespread acceptance and application, flow theory has not been applied to the research process. Moreover, it can further librarians’ knowledge of the importance of affect in information seeking behavior.

Flow is a phenomenological state achieved when skill level is equal to challenge level. Flow experience was operationalized using Z-score analysis as one standard deviation above individuals’ averages. The study used mixed methods including event contingent experience sampling method, Bostick’s library anxiety scale and reflection papers. Following library instruction sessions, undergraduate participants scheduled research consultations with a librarian.

Individual research sessions grew more positive as reflected by Z scores over the semester, with one case of flow. Overall, participants’ library anxiety decreased minimally. Reflection papers reiterated the value of approachability and interest of the librarian, with those who had consultations feeling both increased confidence in their skills and in knowing they had an ally in their research.

The original collaborator and pedagogy were not utilized, thereby limiting the scope and sample size. The author was able to collaborate with other faculty. Future research would benefit from a larger sample size and more collaboration.

Using flow theory as a model can emphasize the positive aspects of research as interesting and enjoyable, even in the imposed query setting of the classroom, and it can encourage librarians’ display of interest during research consultations.