Angela Melidosian is an Assistant Professor of Sustainability at George Washington University in the Alliance for a Sustainable Future. Her research and work focus on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the intersections of sustainability with social, environmental, political, economic, and health practices.

Melidosian describes herself as an active learning professor who values hands-on and collaborative studying, and she is working with GW’s brand new Sustainability Living-Learning Community. She believes that sustainability is for everyone and that sustainable development is relevant to every career. She received both her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Ecology and her M.A. in Sustainable Development Practices from the University of Florida. 

This is the first in our monthly series of interviews featuring the inspiring faculty and staff who work with Planet Forward across our network. Read on to learn more about Melidosian and her work at GW.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Lydia Castilla: Why is sustainability important to you?  

Angela Melidosian: I think it first starts with sustainability being important to everyone. We rely on this planet for all of our basic living, whether that’s the ecosystem services or the resources that we use to support our own biological processes. All of that is fundamentally tied to the planet we live on. And if we’re not sustaining the planet, we’re really not sustaining our own lives. 

I suppose, why it’s important, particularly to me, is more of a personal journey of how meaningful the environment has been in my own life and my own psychological and spiritual well-being. 

I remember I was introduced to sustainability in a high school Spanish class. We had a topic: ‘la vida sostenible’. And instead of being a few weeks long, we did it for three months because we were all into it. 

What I love about teaching sustainability is getting to show my students all the cool, alternative ways of doing and living and being and thinking and feeling that are out there in the world. Sustainability is just so important, but also just super cool. 

LC: How do you think relationship building and community play a role in sustainability?

AM: As with many of the most important things in life, we can’t do it alone. And sustainability is tied to so many social functions. We, as humans, are animals and we’re a social species. So, sustainability is tied to not only our biological realities, but also to our culture.

Sustainability — and environmental ethics, broadly — is all wrapped up in this conversation we have with ourselves and society, both directly and indirectly about who we are as a species or a community or a society, and what we should be doing about that, and what that relationship is with everything around us.

Sustainability is part of this meaning of life that many humans are very interested in. Our interactions with both the environment and each other is all wrapped up into a giant web. We can choose different lenses on how we’re going to conceive of those things. We’re problemizing or creating actions. It’s all enmeshed together and we all just choose slightly different priorities. 

LC: What efforts have you seen in sustainability on a local scale and maybe even a global scale recently? 

AM: The big thing right now is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs. So they are a set of 17 goals with 169 specific targets; amongst those 17 goals for the world to progress on between 2015 and 2030. We are getting to the end of that time period, which, spoiler alert, we’re not doing so hot on it. The SDGs are at the forefront of international collaboration. They are also in the forefront of our research and a lot of our courses in academia are oriented around these SDGs. 

The SDGs right now are a really useful tool, in academia in particular, not because we have really any hope of reaching them, but because they allow people to see sustainability as more than just about plants. It allows us to look at what I call the five domains in my course: the ecology and environment, society and culture, a political piece and an economics piece — and probably the one people think about the least is our human health component. I think the biggest efforts right now at national and international scales are going to be the Sustainable Development Goals.

One great example of amazing sustainability happening at the local level has been GW’s new Living-Learning Community (LLC) for sustainability. This was our first semester, so we have a team of 15 students that currently are saying ‘Live, Learn, Vern.’ They’re all living together at the Vern (GW’s Mount Vernon campus) and they take some shared coursework during the first year. They take a course with Dr. (Michael) Svoboda, who’s also the advisor for GW’s Sustainability Minor, and they also take my Intro to Sustainability course. So that’s a great community, and we’re looking forward to having our second cohort of students join us next year. 

LC: How can students find out more about the Sustainability LLC — either to join or start a similar community on their own campus?

AM: They can check out the GW Alliance website, which details everything we do and how to apply.

LC: As a professor, what do you want your students to take away from their sustainability studies with you? For a student taking an introductory level course to sustainability, what is one thing you want them to think about as they leave your class? 

AM: Luckily, the Alliance for Sustainable Future has allowed me to make so many new courses. This is my third semester, and I’ve designed three special topics courses already. In my intro course, I really want students to take away that sustainability is more than just about the environment. Again, sustainability is not just about plants, but it’s also about making the world better for people. It’s for everyone, and every career possible can tie in to one of these sustainable development goals. It’s incredibly important for your academic and professional journey, no matter what you ultimately decide to do. 

In my environmental ethics and justice course, as well as a lot of my special topics, I want us to be aware of the different ways that we can live in this world and especially those that are more sustainable. There are a plethora of ways to connect with nature and the different ways we can go about that, whether it’s something very radical or the small stuff that we can do right here on campus. I teach “Culminating Experience and Sustainability” as one of the two capstone options. For that, I want students to go through this transition of being a confident, sustainability minor college student, to a competent, sustainability-informed, early career professional.

LC: What is one that you’re looking forward to teaching next semester?

AM: The new ‘Grateful Death’ course. It’s open to all undergraduates this upcoming semester. I am very much an active learning professor, so most of class time is small group work, small group discussion, class wide discussions, with very limited lecturing. It has no midterms or final exams. Instead, it’s oriented around short research reflection papers and we’ll actually be producing podcast episodes about death and dying with the support of the CREATE Digital Studio in Gelman Library. Students will get to work together to create a short podcast episode. The episodes will be shared through both the Alliance for a Sustainable Future website and Planet Forward. I think it’s a really fun opportunity for students to talk about death, which we have this huge cultural taboo about. Then that content is not shared just with me as a professor for a grade, but out in the universe for other people to learn from and to use.

This is the first in our monthly series of interviews on the inspiring faculty and staff who work with Planet Forward across our network. If you know someone who should be featured, please nominate them!