When civil engineering professor Bryan Karney gives lectures about sustainability, he asks his students to think about their favourite place in the world. Then he tells them to imagine that its gone forever.

“To me, the bottom line is that we live in an incredible world that, by and large we take for granted,” he said. “It’s time to wake up and look after it. Not because ‘The sky is falling’-I don’t think that’s a great motivation-but because it’s a wonderful place,” Karney said.

TVO’s Best Lecturer competition is entering its fourth week this Saturday, and Karney is one of six U of T professors to make it to the finals.

An expert on water resource systems and climate change, Karney is at the forefront of the academic movement that seeks to reduce humanity’s negative impact on the environment. His lecture, entitled “The Challenge of Environmental Stewardship” airs TVO weekend.

In his civil engineering classes, Karney seeks technical responses to what academics have termed the “wicked problems” of sustainability: problems so complex and difficult to define in terms of scope and impact that they seem to defy solution. And while the jargon Karney uses such as-“the transient analysis of large distribution systems”-may seem rather sterile, his lectures are able to transmit his passionate belief in the importance of the material.

“The thing I’m always trying to do is engage both the heart and the mind,” he said, “to make it irresistable for people to want to learn, to give them both the content and the motivation.”

But when dealing with such complex subject matter, Karney admits that his lectures don’t always go according to plan. “I don’t always succeed,” he laughed, “not everyone always gets what I’m trying to portray.”

Karney has already won numerous awards, including the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering Teaching Award in 2001-02 and Civil Engineering’s Professor of the Year in 2000, but he says being nominated as Ontario’s Best Lecturer surpasses them all.

“This is huge compared to the other things,” he said. “It creates the possiblity of a much larger audience.”

But Karney tries not to place too much importance on the recognition he’s received. “When I stopped thinking of teaching awards I became a better teacher and won more of them,” he said.

“Receiving a letter years later from someone who’s taken my class and enjoyed it is much more valuable.”