Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at Sussex
In order to promote a more sustainable future, people of all ages need to assume responsibility for their actions and commit themselves to creating positive social and environmental change. It is a monumental task and education for sustainable development is the key to making it happen (UNU, 2012).
As a result of an initiative led by the Student Union, the university is committing to the integration of sustainable development in education at Sussex. ESD is intended to prepare current and future graduates to take an intelligent and creative approach to dealing with sustainable development issues, as part of both curricular and extra-curricular activities.The emphasis is on active participation by students and staff in all aspects.
A task force has been set up to drive forward progress in embedding sustainability in the curriculum at Sussex, to ensure that all students leave their courses with the skills and knowledge to understand and address sustainability issues in their future careers.
This initiative is one of the results of an earlier HEFCE-funded project which involved senior managers and students working together on sustainability plans for university.
In this next stage, funds have been made available for five small-scale collaborative projects to run in this academic year 2012 -13. A number of other possible activities are being explored by the task force, including:
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Creating new electives to ensure that all students are able to choose sustainability modules as part of their course
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Training for academic staff to encourage them to share knowledge and skills about sustainability with students
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The development of a programme of sustainability-related careers services.
For more information, email esd@sussex.ac.uk.
Student and staff projects.
Bids for up to £2000 were invited from groups of students and staff to fund initiatives or activities that will promote or embed sustainability in the curriculum or some related area.
The five successful projects which have received funding are:
Creating an outdoor teaching and learning space on campus.
A team of students and staff from Law, Politics and Sociology will be organising a workshop to explore the creation of an outdoor classroom as an alternative teaching space on the campus. Alongside Sussex faculty and students, speakers will include the leader of Forest School training at the Sussex Wildlife Trust and the Director of outdoor education company SO Sussex. In the UK outdoor classrooms in HE institutions are still rare. However, in 2010 the University of Kent successfully created such a classroom on campus and members of faculty involved in the creation and use of this classroom will be invited to discuss its design and the realities of outdoor learning. A representative of the Sustainability Centre, based near Petersfield, will also be asked to participate in order to fully explore the sustainability perspective on outdoor learning.
Transition University of Sussex
A team of students and staff from Global Studies will produce a joint report on establishing Sussex as a transition university, examining ways in which the university can minimise its negative environmental impacts by reducing its carbon footprint, promoting local biodiversity and minimising waste. The students involved will not only learn about an area of sustainability but will establish contacts with non-profit organisations, businesses, local government and the University’s Estates and Facilities Management; learn about sustainability-related careers from practitioners; and develop research skills by conducting interviews, writing up findings, managing a small research budget, being involved in project planning, co-ordination, execution and disseminating research findings.
Multi-use not refuse!
A multi-disciplinary team of students and staff from Life Sciences and Global Studies aim to reduce the consumption of plastic water bottles on campus. They want to change the mind-set of students by encouraging sustainable habits. First, with a stall at Sussex fresher’s fair, where they will give out both reusable water bottles and maps showing the location of water fountains around campus. The stall will also be used to raise general awareness about plastic bottle consumption. They will also organise a ‘Water Awareness Week’ in early October 2013 to challenge students to refrain from buying bottled water on campus for a week. During WAW they would also like to invite an eco-friendly reusable bottle company to set up a stall on campus for a day, to sell bottles to students at a discount.
Transition University Website
A multi-disciplinary team of students and staff from Life Sciences and Global Studies will be setting up a website that acts as a hub for the sustainability projects happening on campus. This will be based on the St Andrews Transition University website, and will have a homepage which links to pages for each initiative, including Sussex Scoop, Sussex Roots, Free-wheelers, Swap-shop, Free-shop, and the bike-hire co-op plus other university initiatives such as Sussex Switch off. The website will also include links to local sustainability projects such as Stanmer Organics and Moulsecoomb forest garden, and information on how to get involved. This project will also include setting up Sussex Shoots - a veg box scheme run in the same theme as Sussex Scoop and the veg box scheme at Brighton university, where students can order a locally sourced veg box, at wholesale price, which they then pick up the next week at a pick up point on campus.
The pieces of a Feast
Students and staff from three schools - Music, Media and Film, Global Studies and Business, Management and Economics got together for this project which will recruit a network of people to grow or develop a single food ingredient over the course of the summer, then bring it to a final event where a chef will prepare the pieces in a shared feast. There will also be seminars with external speakers on food sourcing, photographic documentation of processes and student participation in a farmers market. Project aims include highlighting the possibilities for food production on campus and in urban Brighton, and raising awareness of the effort it takes to produce individual ingredients; diverging practices underpinning globally-sourced food; the waste inherent in prevailing ways of eating; exploration of the food that suits the landscape and climate and the cooperative pluralism required for the sustainable consumption of food.
We look forward to seeing these projects develop over the coming months and will bring you updates on their progress on these pages.
Further resources on ESD.
There is a web page on sustainability amongst the ideas and guidance pages on the TLDU website providing a brief introduction to the issue of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and suggesting some resources that you may find useful as you think about how sustainability might be addressed in your teaching and learning context.