Aligning Campus Strategy with the SDGs …
23
when efforts deployed in more visible actions, including staff development, might
affect greater change.
Green Impact as an initiative has inspired some change, serving to raise awareness
of the SDGs and triggering lots of new activities that will enhance environmental
management. It is however, to date, not appealing sufficiently to academic teams.
Ways will need to be sought to enhance academic engagement. Green Rewards, on
the other hand, is a scheme which is engaging all staff across BU, with clear links
between activities and the SDGs; to date, nearly 600 staff have signed up (just over
30%). In future, the data will provide an invaluable indicator of the ways that staff
are contributing to achieving the SDGs.
In moving forward, in those cases where the SDGs are already included in the
curriculum (e.g. M.Sc. Green Economy (an entire programme) and on the final year
Globalisation and Sustainable Development unit, at undergraduate level), it will be
important that pedagogy seeks to engage students in critical discussion to enable
the paradoxes that characterise the larger discourse of sustainable development in
educational practice and by extension the SDGs to be explored. Kopnina (2017)
illustrates how through the combination of pluralist, participatory, transformative and
instrumental ecocentric approaches at three different institutions in the Netherlands
(vocational college, undergraduate and postgraduate levels), she was able to stimulate
the students’ recognition of critique of the most common terms in the SDGs, namely
economic development, inclusion and resilience.
It will also be important to enable the transfer of the theoretical concepts mentioned in the SDGs and associated targets, to personal lives and future work contexts
and in so doing, encourage individuals to explore the SDGs independently. Crespo
et al. (2017) describe how they were able to do that at the University of Vigo (Spain)
by introducing a sustainable holistic rubric based on the SDGs targets which was
used to assess students’ dissertations. This year, at BU, the SDGs have been incorporated into the assignment for the Globalisation and Sustainable Development unit
and the authors of this paper will be able to analyse the t extent to which a less time
demanding approach compared to Crespo et al. (2017) might still achieve the same
result.
As a final reflection, the process of change at BU has taken time but also considerable effort on the part of SSG members but the Sustainability Manager, in particular.
Such changes require attendance at numerous workshop sessions and leading the
delivery of presentations, as well as being alert to every opportunity to influence conversations with decision makers. Experience has shown that working in partnership
with academics, across educational boundaries and university functions, contributes
greatly to success; formalising decisions through a strategy group that is chaired by
a Deputy Vice Chancellor, gives legitimacy to outcomes.
23
when efforts deployed in more visible actions, including staff development, might
affect greater change.
Green Impact as an initiative has inspired some change, serving to raise awareness
of the SDGs and triggering lots of new activities that will enhance environmental
management. It is however, to date, not appealing sufficiently to academic teams.
Ways will need to be sought to enhance academic engagement. Green Rewards, on
the other hand, is a scheme which is engaging all staff across BU, with clear links
between activities and the SDGs; to date, nearly 600 staff have signed up (just over
30%). In future, the data will provide an invaluable indicator of the ways that staff
are contributing to achieving the SDGs.
In moving forward, in those cases where the SDGs are already included in the
curriculum (e.g. M.Sc. Green Economy (an entire programme) and on the final year
Globalisation and Sustainable Development unit, at undergraduate level), it will be
important that pedagogy seeks to engage students in critical discussion to enable
the paradoxes that characterise the larger discourse of sustainable development in
educational practice and by extension the SDGs to be explored. Kopnina (2017)
illustrates how through the combination of pluralist, participatory, transformative and
instrumental ecocentric approaches at three different institutions in the Netherlands
(vocational college, undergraduate and postgraduate levels), she was able to stimulate
the students’ recognition of critique of the most common terms in the SDGs, namely
economic development, inclusion and resilience.
It will also be important to enable the transfer of the theoretical concepts mentioned in the SDGs and associated targets, to personal lives and future work contexts
and in so doing, encourage individuals to explore the SDGs independently. Crespo
et al. (2017) describe how they were able to do that at the University of Vigo (Spain)
by introducing a sustainable holistic rubric based on the SDGs targets which was
used to assess students’ dissertations. This year, at BU, the SDGs have been incorporated into the assignment for the Globalisation and Sustainable Development unit
and the authors of this paper will be able to analyse the t extent to which a less time
demanding approach compared to Crespo et al. (2017) might still achieve the same
result.
As a final reflection, the process of change at BU has taken time but also considerable effort on the part of SSG members but the Sustainability Manager, in particular.
Such changes require attendance at numerous workshop sessions and leading the
delivery of presentations, as well as being alert to every opportunity to influence conversations with decision makers. Experience has shown that working in partnership
with academics, across educational boundaries and university functions, contributes
greatly to success; formalising decisions through a strategy group that is chaired by
a Deputy Vice Chancellor, gives legitimacy to outcomes.