Alison Bailey, Associate Professor of Management from the Business School, and Kristabel Lanham-New, a Year 1 Management student

Alison Bailey, Kristabel Lanham-New, Estela Castelli Florino Pilz and Konstantine Skritsovali

Students from Sussex have been speaking out on the value of education for sustainable development at a number of national events.

One student from the Business School took to the stage at a leading conference focused on ways to transform management education and develop the responsible decision-makers of tomorrow to advance sustainable development.

When the PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education) UK & Ireland conference took place in June in Belfast, among those addressing delegates was Kristabel Lanham-New, a Year 1 Management student, who co-presented with Alison Bailey, Associate Professor of Management from the Business School.

Alison has been instrumental in leading the University’s partnership with Sulitest, an international organisation that measures, improves and certifies sustainability knowledge: its TASK test is an online tool that measures the level of sustainability knowledge of individuals and groups, inspired by the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

There were 1,041 TASK assessments completed in the past academic year here at Sussex over 17 sessions.

Kristabel and Alison were joined on stage by Estela Castelli Florino Pilz from Sulitest and Konstantine Skritsovali, senior lecturer within the Business School at Liverpool John Moores University at the conference, which had the theme 'Partnering for Progress: Enhancing Collaboration, Building Communities, and Navigating Conflict to Accelerate Agenda 2030'.

Kristabel told delegates how gaining the TASK certificate has boosted her employability skills and given her a unique asset for her CV: “It has enabled me to develop critical sustainability skills for my future career and strengthened my knowledge of sustainability, which contributes to global impact in the future.”

Creating green leaders of the future

In another summertime speaking success, a group of Sussex students joined Alison at the National Teaching Fellowship (NTF) Conference in May.

She had co-ordinated a partnership with Rewired Earth during the second-year Leadership Foundation module, where students tackled a sustainability challenge for a chance to win £1,000 and internships. Ben Foreman, Monica Deakin and Emily Johnston, from Sucseeds, one of the winning teams in the collaboration, presented the initiative at the NTF congress in Hereford and received a great response.

"They were outstanding and received positive comments on their professional presentation, with being very interested and supportive of the Rewired Earth collaboration," said Alison, who won a Sussex Award earlier this year for Community Impact, Scholarship and Social Responsibility for the partnership.

She has also joined forces with Alexandra Pearson and Claire Tymoshyshyn to introduce climate awareness into the curriculum by hosting Climate Fresk workshops. Over 500 students were trained to understand and address climate change,  and the team took home the Environmental Sustainability Sussex Award for this work.