Beyond Class Hours: The GIS Lab as a Center of Geographic Education

Much has been written regarding the effectiveness of different teaching styles; however, considerably less has been written about the physical design of computer classrooms and their implications on education. To date, nothing has been written regarding building an informal learning community within a computer classroom, particularly outside of formal class hours. In this paper, the author examines designing an environment in which geography students feel at home, that is, a center of geographic education. Such a center could be defined as a place where students and faculty congregate to create and transmit geographic knowledge. A GIS lab can be such a place if deliberate care and effort are taken to ensure that the lab is multidisciplinary, dynamic, encourages creativity and discourse, and is a think tank for solving geospatial problems. This paper illustrates some proven methods for building such an environment

Social capital accounting: The social capital protocol and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainability accounting has become a mainstream practice for a large majority of S&P500 companies, and this reflects global society’s increasing interest and concern around sustainability issues. In particular, the United Nations published its “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” and 193 countries signed up to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets. The UN also called upon companies to help this process across their supply chains and developed a natural capital protocol for assessing and valuing environmental areas and a social capital protocol (SCP) for assessing and valuing human and societal capital such as skills, knowledge, wellbeing, shared values, and institutions. This chapter systematically investigates each of the 12 steps of the social capital protocol and identifies a range of benefits and substantial challenges which companies will face if they wish to account for their social impact across the supply chain