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.
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.
Urban Heat Islands and the Georgia Tech Climate Network
Extreme heat leads to more deaths in the US than all other natural disasters combined, and as global temperatures rise, so will the dangers.
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 opportunitie
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.
SLCE Nuts & Bolts
“What strategies and resources are available to me to integrate community engagement into my teaching?”
This section of the toolkit is your answer. It offers you guidance about service learning and community engagement (SLCE) organized into the six categories below. In addition, a repository of Community Engagement Action Guides can be found at the bottom of this page. It is a living resource, and we will be updating it frequently. Please contact Ruthie Yow, SLS Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist (ruth.yow@gatech.edu) with your ideas for improving it!
Technology and Social Context
This tool helps students understand how social context can influence the success or failure of projects; as a result, students will learn to design their own projects, both local and abroad, with attention to the context and the communities in which they’re working.
Civic Data Guides: Thinking Critically about Digital Public Records
Over the past decade public institutions have put considerable resources towards improving the quality and availability of civic data, such as budget and expenditure information, building permits, air quality readings, police incidents, and property ownership records.
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.
Stratification Monopoly: A Comparative Perspective
Some of the major challenges in teaching about economic inequality and mobility are a) understanding the differences between income and wealth, as well as other types of economic resources; b) encouraging students to be empathetic to those who have a different economic standing than their own; c)
An Intro to Community Health
Community health is the state of wellbeing of a group of individuals who share common attitudes, beliefs, interests, histories, and/or goals. Use this tool to explore what it means to optimize the health and quality of life of community members in a socially just and holistic way.
Readings, Videos, and Resources about Community Health
The Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain aims to help students create sustainable communities, where humans and nature flourish in the present and future. One SLS Priority area concerning sustainable communities is Community Health, which focuses on achieving a holistic and communal understanding of health, in all intellectual, physical, emotional, financial, spiritual, and social aspects of life.
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.
SLS Case Study: Proctor Creek
Proctor Creek runs through northwest Atlanta, extending from I-20 in southwest Atlanta to the Chattahoochee River. An important piece of Atlanta’s natural environment, it also has a long history of neglect and pollution, which has negatively affected its surrounding communities.
Readings, Videos, and Resources about Equitable and Sustainable Development
The Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain aims to help students create sustainable communities, where humans and nature flourish in the present and future. One SLS Priority area concerning sustainable communities is Equitable & Sustainable Development, focuses on how environment, economy, equity and society shape large infrastructure projects.
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.
SLS Case Study: The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design
The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design at Georgia Tech promises to be a flexible, multi-use academic space as well as the most environmentally advanced educational and research building in the Southeast.
Readings, Videos, and Resources about Green Infrastructure
The Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain aims to help students create sustainable communities, where humans and nature flourish in the present and future. One SLS Priority area concerning sustainable communities is Green Infrastructure, which focuses on achieving a society in which our buildings, neighborhoods, and cities promote environmental justice and allow the local environment to flourish.
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.
Community Engagement Preparation and Reflection Tool
This tool provides instructors with two assignments that 1) prepare students to engage with community partners, and 2) allow students to reflect upon their community engagement experience.
Readings, Videos, and Resources about Social Innovation
The Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain aims to help students create sustainable communities, where humans and nature flourish in the present and future. One SLS Priority area concerning sustainable communities is Social Innovation, which focuses on instigating change and progress in social areas.
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.
Living Infrastructure: The Atlanta BeltLine
This tool uses stakeholder mapping to explore the various entities that influence and benefit from infrastructure projects. Through a short presentation and reading, students will learn about one specific infrastructure project: the Atlanta BeltLine.
Readings, Videos, and Resources about Climate Change & Energy
The Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain aims to help students create sustainable communities, where humans and nature flourish in the present and future. One SLS Priority area concerning sustainable communities is Climate Change & Energy, which focuses on Earth's changing climate and the energy advancements being made to keep these changes in check.
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.
