Sulitest

Sulitest report logo

I received an e-mailing from an organization called "Sulitest", which stans (I think) for SUstainability LIteracy TESTing.  This is in fact one of the many ideas that are related to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro, 2012, and known as Rio+20 because it was a 20-year follow-up to the original Earth Summit also held in Rio - in 1992!

Specifically, Sulitest is part of the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI). The website says, By joining the HESI, Chancellors, Presidents, Rectors, Deans and leaders of Higher Education Institutions and related organizations, acknowledged the responsibility that they bear in the international pursuit of sustainable development. They agree to teach Sustainable Development concepts, encourage research on sustainable development issues, make their campuses greener and more sustainable, support sustainability efforts in their communities and share results through international frameworks. 


Has Penn State joined the HESI?   Good question - and one that I don't know the answer to.  One would suspect that the answer would be "yes", or why am I getting these mailings about Sulitest? On the other hand, even if Penn State has joined, why am I getting them? As you see, I really don't know.

What is Sulitest? That is a question I can answer, sort of. It is intended to provide an internationally-valid assessment tool for sustainability education.  So that, any university course on sustainable development or something like that can have a 'final exam' that makes use of the Sulitest tool. There is also supposed to be a "teach yourself" facility so that any individual can use Sulitest to measure their own level of understanding.

I would like now to be able to report that I have taken the tool for a "test drive" and that my experiences have been so-and-so.  Unfortunately when I try to do that, I am told that the "individual mode" is not yet available.  Without personal experience, all I can say is that this is something interesting to watch.   Having an assessment tool for one's understanding of sustainability which is recognized as having international validity is surely a worthwhile goal.

Here is a link to the executive summary of the Sulitest report, and here is a link to their front page.