University of Nottingham. Green Academy case study

Transcription

1 University of Nottingham Green Academy case study

2 Case study University of Nottingham Key features: clear alignment with University mission and environmental strategy; a clear institutional strategic focus the grand challenge; an accessible model based on campus, curriculum, culture and community; baseline audit of the curriculum; extending the interdisciplinary base of provision. Context With over 40,000 students and nearly 8,000 staff and campuses in Malaysia and China, the University of Nottingham is a significant national and international player in higher education, research and knowledge transfer. It has used its global reach to pioneer a range of high quality and influential environmental developments over the past decade. Its strategic objectives on the environment are set out clearly in its Environmental Strategy-2010 and led by a personal commitment from its Vice-Chancellor: The global imperative to reduce carbon emissions and to improve the sustainability of our activities is compelling. The university clearly must contribute by addressing our own operations, but as a higher education institution we are also ideally placed to influence the future through the education of our students and our world-leading research. These commitments are underpinned and enabled by an approach to governance where a focus on environmental performance is a defining feature of the decision-making process. This is exemplified in its capital investment programme, its focus on reducing its environmental impact, the establishment of a University-wide environment committee and a separate environmental pro-vice-chancellor appointment within the senior management team.

3 In its courses the University has historically taken a lead in the development of undergraduate and postgraduate provision with a strong environmental focus. These are now prevalent in schools and faculties across many of the more traditional science, engineering, agricultural, food, medical and veterinarian disciplines. As well as these more traditional discipline-based programmes the University is increasingly offering students the opportunity to engage in wider more interdisciplinary themes linked to projects in the local community and through volunteering activities. These programmes come under the broad heading, the Nottingham Advantage Award. The University has also recently announced a major new initiative, the Nottingham Impact Campaign, to raise 150 million in the next five years to enhance the University s ability to push forward the boundaries of its activities into new high impact projects. One of the five strategic themes is Sustainable Futures, which is aimed at exploring bio-energy, climate resilience and sustainable agricultural and food production systems. Impact of the Green Academy In February 2011 a small team of academic and support staff volunteered to take part in the Higher Education Academy s flagship education for sustainable development change programme the Green Academy. The team, many of whom had not met before have built up a thorough understanding of education for sustainability as a result of the Green Academy programme, but more importantly they recognise the real impetus that the process has given to the sustainability change process within the University. The words most often used by the team to describe their experience include: a significant catalyst for what was already going on ; an opportunity to build a credible and action orientated team ; access to critical friends in a wider national network ; teamwork based on grounded personal relationships. Based on their joint experience the Nottingham team has been galvanised and motivated to establish a more strategic position for education for sustainability across the University. In a short space of time they moved from a more limited project-based approach to embedding sustainability into the curriculum to a more strategic enabling approach linked to an already well-established institutional change process called: the Grand Challenge. In essence the Grand Challenge sends and sets out a strategic challenge to every school and without any coercion or threat invites them to participate in a broadly based change process, in this specific case to find mechanisms to embed sustainability into the culture and activities of the University. Currently there are four Grand Challenges in operation: Tutoring; Assessment in the Digital Age; Internationalisation of the Curriculum; and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Each Grand Challenge has to make a case to the Teaching and Learning Board of the University and if accepted is formally adopted by the senior management team and Senate. The Nottingham Green Academy team s application for Grand Challenge was agreed by Senate in July 2011, a mere four months after the Green Academy programme. An important element of this formal process is that each Grand Challenge is eligible for funding for any of the activities it initiates in any of the schools that agree to participate. The ESD theme is broadly based around the 4C model articulated by Jones et al. (2010) 1 at the University of Plymouth. The four C s identified are campus, curriculum, community and culture, which sends a clear and inclusive, system-wide message that in order to embed sustainability all four dimensions must form part of an integrated change process. There is currently some discussion about a fifth element incorporating a future dimension to the model and hence the idea of the Grand Challenge contributing to the longer-term. The adoption of a simple model has avoided any of the definitional debates that surround the terms sustainability and sustainable development and lead to a more consensual and coherent debate on the way forward. As part of the Grand Challenge process the University has established a high-level ESD steering group chaired by a senior manager, which includes cross-faculty representation. The steering group has agreed an ambitious two-year action plan with a significant emphasis on wider engagement across the University. This has some innovative and creative elements including a growing catalogue of short videos that exemplify the individual and disciplinary approaches to sustainability being adopted across the faculties as well as across the campuses in Nottingham and overseas. The overarching approach is one of facilitated and inclusive advocacy using a range of academic and 1 Jones, P., Selby, D. and Sterling, S. (2010) Sustainability Education: Perspectives and Practice Across Higher Education. London: Earthscan.

4 administrative staff and senior managers to air their experiences. Another dimension, Project Connect, takes a cultural approach focusing on overseas students at the two campuses in Malaysia and China and using digital communication technology to link them to their peer groups and similar ethnic groups already in Nottingham. One of the early actions prompted by the Green Academy programme was a baseline survey of what sustainability-orientated course programmes were currently being offered by the University. The survey involved a simple keyword search of the University module catalogue. The search included words such as: sustainability ; sustainable development ; environmental ; green ; citizenship ; recycle ; inter-cultural ; and problem solving. The audit indicated that the greatest concentrations of modules with these keywords were being taken by postgraduates, which make up about 30% of the student population. This relatively limited but nonetheless critical litmus test of the overall provision has indicated that sustainability as a broad theme builds slowly in undergraduate programmes, then catapults to a high level at Masters level and virtually disappears at doctoral level. The research also revealed that much of the primary focus of the modules was on environmental sustainability with less emphasis on a more integrated approach to the environmental, social and economic dimensions. In order to address this issue as well as furthering the objective of wider embedding of ESD into the curriculum the Grand Challenge team has encouraged the design of a number of interdisciplinary modules to be included within the Nottingham Advantage Award Scheme. These will come fully on stream in September 2012, but all will complement developments within the more formal undergraduate and postgraduate programmes by offering them as an open source (ten-unit modules) on the Nottingham Open Learning Platform. This is part of a successful JISC bid to open up interdisciplinary generic sustainability modules to students and for staff to have the opportunity to create new learning resources with strong ESD themes, which will help widen a student s cultural, citizenship and employability horizons. While much of the change process initiated by the Green Academy programme is still at an early stage there are clear indications that the formation of a strong and credible coalition of academic and estates staff has facilitated action by a growing number of other staff based on the vision created by the Grand Challenge. This has led to a number of discrete sustainability-related curriculum initiatives that will enhance and widen the choices open to students.

5 Contact us The Higher Education Academy Innovation Way York Science Park Heslington York YO10 5BR +44 (0) ISBN: The Higher Education Academy, 2012 The Higher Education Academy (HEA) is a national body for learning and teaching in higher education. We work with universities and other higher education providers to help bring about change in learning and teaching. We do this to improve the experience that students have while they are studying, and to support and develop those who teach them. Our activities focus on rewarding and recognising excellence in teaching, bringing together people and resources to research and share best practice, and by helping to influence, shape and implement policy - locally, nationally, and internationally. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Editor. Such permission will normally be granted for educational purposes provided that due acknowledgement is given. To request copies of this report in large print or in a different format, please contact the communications office at the Higher Education Academy: or pressoffice@heacademy.ac.uk