Leveraging educational partnerships to integrate education for sustainable development into university geoscience curriculum

Purpose The application of Earth Observation (EO) science to sustainable development has become increasingly accessible. This is partly due to an open science movement concurrent with increased popularity of both higher education partnerships and the concept of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). The confluence of these movements presents a unique capacity building opportunity: to provide emerging professionals with the ability to capitalize on open EO data and software, leveraging them for sustainable development across various thematic areas. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework and case study illustrating how academic partnerships can catalyze the integration of ESD on a small scale in postsecondary education. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a novel capacity building approach via the co-development of higher education curriculum by SERVIR and ITC. SERVIR is a U.S. government initiative of NASA. ITC is the University of Twente’s Faculty of Geo-Information Science and EO. This paper integrated SERVIR’s open-source EO tools into courses at ITC, building the capacity of students to apply such tools to address real-world environmental challenges. Findings This paper provides a case study indicating that educational partnerships can strengthen the ESD approach of a Higher Education Institution (HEI) by providing local environmental challenges and open-source tools to combat those challenges, while simultaneously strengthening the capacity building strategies of both institutions. Originality/value While educational partnerships have pursued curriculum development initiatives, the literature is limited in approaches that supplement existing courses with curriculum materials co-developed with an external partner. This paper provides a framework and case study of this smaller-scale collaboration for HEIs wishing to leverage external partners to use ESD in the higher education classroom.