Browse our tools by Category, Type, Big Ideas, and/or Time Commitment, for example, or simply feel free to explore the options below. We also invite you to contribute by adding your own tools that you’ve successfully tried in your classrooms.
Thinking More About Food, Climate Change, and Sustainability
This awareness building short reading and discussion activity allows students to:
Responsible and Sustainable Creativity: Working with the Georgia Tech Invention Studio
This tool is developed from ideas used by Yelena Rivera-Vale and Kristina Chatfield in their GT 1000 courses.
Concept Maps
This tool provides an overview of concept maps, and how to use them. Concept maps (CMaps) are diagrams that represent organized knowledge. They are a useful tool for assessing student knowledge over the course of a project, module, or course.
Exploring Asset-Based Community Development: The Parkway Community
The Parkway Community ABCD Exercise invites students to engage in an exercise to explore what it means to take an asset-based approach to community development (“an ABCD” approach), versus a “needs” or “deficit” approach.
Getting to Know our Georgia Tech Through Journaling
This journaling tool, based on a lesson created by Yelena Rivera-Vale and Kristina Chatfield, introduces first year students to Georgia Tech’s efforts to create a sustainable campus community.
Environmental Justice Resources
This tool provides a series of definitions, videos, and other resources for faculty and students who wish to learn more about Environmental Justice. This is an evolving resource, so please feel free to make recommendations!
Raising Awareness Through Poster Design
It's one thing to be able to articulate what sustainability means, and it's another thing to be able to communicate your ideas through visual design, but this poster design tool does both.
Three Rubrics
This tool is designed to introduce instructors to a variety of rubrics. Rubrics are designed to assess student work. However, there are many types of rubrics, each of which is useful for different assignments and goals of assessment.
Smart Cities Kit
The Smart Cities Kit is a set of hands-on materials that supports collaborative scenario building activities. These activities can foster a greater understanding of smart-cities as socio-technical systems.
MARTA: The History and Future of Transportation in Atlanta
This is a collection of assignments about public transportation in Atlanta.
Rodent Control
This is a collection of assignments around the problem of rodent infestation in cities, which has become a pressing problem following the mild winters in 2015-16.
Urban Farming & Community Gardens
Starting a community garden in an abandoned vacant lot is a good way to address blight in a neighborhood. This project builds on the dataset of Westside Atlanta property surveys and walks the students through the process of starting a community garden to selling its produce on farmers markets.
Beyond the Haircut: A University Barbershop Case Study (GT Business)
The University Barbershop stands at the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and James P Brawley Drive in Atlanta, GA. Established in 1956, it is one of the oldest barbershops in America.
Business Case Studies
The annotated case studies below are well-suited to business courses across the Scheller College of Business. Review the options available for your class, and don’t hesitate to recommend a new case study to SLS!
Design Case Studies
The annotated case studies below are well-suited to Design courses across the College of Design. Review the options available for your class, and don’t hesitate to recommend a new case study to SLS!
Engineering Case Studies
The annotated case studies included in this tool are well-suited to engineering courses across the College of Engineering. Review the options available for your class, and don’t hesitate to recommend a new case study to SLS!
Multidisciplinary Case Studies
The annotated case studies below are well-suited to courses across Georgia Tech that hope to engage their students in sustainability. Review the options available for your class, and don’t hesitate to recommend a new case study to SLS!
SLS Case Study: The Atlanta BeltLine
The Atlanta BeltLine is one of the most important urban renewal projects of the 21st century. In this case study, read about the ambitions, successes, and struggles of this project, now in its 12th year.
ReGenesis Case Study: Creating a Sustainable Community through Collaborative Problem-Solving
This tool uses the ReGenesis case study from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to explore what it means to “create sustainable communities” through broad stakeholder engagement.
Society, Equity, and Sustainability
SLS approaches sustainability as an integrated system, linking environment, economy, and society.
Introduction to SLS & Sustainable Communities
This tool, intended to be used towards the beginning of the semester, helps instructors frame their course to students in relation to SLS and our mission of educating students to help create sustainable communities. It also prompts students to begin exploring additional opportunities for con
Learning More About Community Organizations
This presentation tool, based on a lesson created by Yelena Rivera-Vale and Kristina Chatfield for their GT 1000 course, introduces first year students to community organizations working on initiatives in the local Atlanta area.
Sample Syllabi for SLS-Affiliated Courses
Serve-Learn-Sustain is well on its way to having affiliated courses and projects in every department across Georgia Tech. Below, you will find sample syllabi from disciplines that cross the six colleges and schools.
SLS Case Study: The Flint Water Crisis
The Flint Water Crisis is one of the most significant instances of environmental injustice in the 21st century. In this case study, read about the impact of the crisis on the natural world, as well as the residents of Flint, Michigan, and learn about how we can use technology to create a sa
Co-Curricular Reflection Tool
This tool provides instructors with a focused reflective activity that asks students to make connections between their course and a co-curricular experience.
