Universities including Greenwich have a crucial role to play in preparing our students to help solve many of these challenges. Through our teaching we have an opportunity to introduce our students to these issues, many of which are of real importance to everyone's values and interests. Sustainability within our teaching can bring added relevance and life to our taught subjects, especially when it can illustrate how the learning can solve some of the challenges society or the planet faces. These include issues facing humanity, for example; poverty, inequality, justice, health, access to clean water and decent work. They relate to our impact on the planet with the resources we use, the pollution we generate and the impact to our natural environments. They also include questions of how we can create truly sustainable societies and economies.
We can relate sustainability to almost every single programme we run
One way to illustrate this is to use the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a framework by which academics and students consider how the subject could contribute to one or more goals. As these goals cover social, environmental, and economic spheres there is a huge opportunity to explore subjects in ways that can engage and enlighten students. They can apply their learning to helping solve some of these goals not only in their studies, but also inspire them to help deliver these goals in their graduate careers.
Our work is accelerating at Greenwich
We are helping our teaching staff consider how sustainability can be integrated into their programmes and in ways that can add real value and interest in learning and career outcomes. To find out more as part of Green Week we are running an online Teams event on Wednesday 25th November, 15.00- 16.30, Integrating sustainability into your teaching. The event illustrates the relevance of sustainability with interactive processes to support teaching through a sustainability lens.
We encourage our students to get more involved with sustainability
You can learn about sustainability beyond your programmes. We invite you to contribute to sustainability improvement through voluntary and other opportunities that the university and the Greenwich Students' Union provides. For example, EcoTeam offers students (and staff) an opportunity to get involved with sustainability actions that can build knowledge, experience and important skills that employers increasingly demand. Join in every Thursday 5-7pm via Teams using this link.
Simon Goldsmith, Head of Sustainability s.t.goldsmith@gre.ac.uk
