Episode 22: Embedding Sustainability in Conservation Education: UCLA Getty
Glenn Wharton and Justine Wuebold from the UCLA Getty conservation program talk to Rachel about their NEH grant-funded project to develop sustainability-focused curriculum.
Justine’s role encompassed researching the current state of education surrounding sustainability including the various pedagogical models being used by other schools and programs around the world. This then developed into crafting small scale modules for testing in the classroom by various professors in the program.
With its focus on archaeological and indigenous cultural heritage, the program prioritizes “action learning” modules to give students more agency and experience. Glenn discusses how role playing is an active teaching style that allows students to really engage with critical thinking, learn to advocate with evidence-supported ideas, and balance differing priorities in real world scenarios.
By opening up the theme of sustainability to include human and social perspectives, students have taken on projects related to Traditional Knowledge and incorporating that learning with contemporary material analysis techniques. These projects are multi-directional as students return to the communities of indigenous knowledge to share what they have learned. Community engagement like this is a pivotal element for conservation students as they are learning to preserve material culture from various communities.
The NEH project is only the beginning and next steps involve getting further feedback from students mid-program and post-program, developing workshops with specific themes, and establishing “green lab certification” criteria to further instill sustainable paradigms into practice for future conservators.
If your program incorporates sustainable paradigms and practices into its teaching, we would like to hear from you. Please reach out to us at aicsustainabilty@gmail.com with the header “Green Tea” so we can learn more about how you are preparing the future generation of cultural heritage professionals.
Resources:
1. UCLA/Getty Interdepartmental Program in the Conservation of Cultural Heritage
2. Wuebold, Justine, Ellen Pearlstein, William Shelley & Glenn Wharton. April 2022. “Preliminary Research into Education for Sustainability in Cultural Heritage Conservation.” Studies in Conservation. 67:sup1. 326-333. DOI: 10.1080/00393630.2022.2059642
3. Pearlstein, Ellen, Justine Wuebold, Glenn Wharton, and Chedeya Brown. (2024). “Barriers to Embedding Sustainability in Conservation Education and Practice.” American Institute of Conservation Research and Technical Studies Specialty Group Annual Meeting Postprints, Salt Lake City, UT, 9-11.
4. The Cloud Institute
5. ENCRyM