Academic Opportunities in Sustainability

Here at BU, we define sustainable development according to the UN SDGs, which work to create a better world by ending poverty, fighting inequality and addressing the urgency of climate change. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is education that provides the knowledge, skills, behaviours and values needed to create a more equal, healthy and environmentally-friendly future. It empowers students to act and lead change to create this future, and we seek to embed it within all our programmes and disciplines.

The key roles of ESD are to:

• Play a transformative role in society by increasing awareness of global issues and developing personal capacity for change
• Foster the values, beliefs and behaviours that are important to a sustainable future in order to develop active, global citizens
• Enable us to understand how our lives are linked with others throughout the world
• Enable us to make decisions that consider the long-term future of all communities, protecting the natural environment while ensuring social justice and economic success.

At BU we continue to explore new ways to inspire our staff and students to understand sustainable development and its essential role in creating a just and fair society. This work is led by the Centre for Fusion Learning Innovation & Excellence (FLIE) and the Sustainability Academic Network Steering Group. Our work includes:

• Recognising and showcasing inspiring ESD practice by our academics through our annual Excellence in ESD Award
• Facilitating the Sustainability Academic Network, an informal network for staff to share and collaborate on ESD practice
• Delivering a sustainability module as part of the PGCert programme, which is delivered to all staff training to become a lecturer
• Actively promoting the SOS-UK SDG Teach-In
• Offering lectures from the Sustainability Team for a range of BU courses, from engineering to project management, and a sustainability workshop to student reps

We conduct an annual university-wide mapping process to assess how each unit aligns to the UNSDGs, using the UNESCO ESD Learning Objectives. The process has been developed by academics from each Faculty and the Sustainability Team: you can see the mapping tool here. You're welcome to use this tool at your university or school, but please let us know if you do!

In the 2023-24 academic year, we found that 96% of programmes aligned to the UN SDGs and 62% include content around the climate and ecological crisis in every year of study.

Read more examples of ESD at BU or take a look at the FLIE blog for more information. 

We have set up the Sustainability Academic Network Steering Group, which is comprised of faculty leads and representatives from every academic department in BU. The faculty leads report directly to the Sustainability Committee and lead on embedding sustainable development in our education and research across BU. If you are interested in becoming a departmental representative, join the Sustainability Academic Network Steering Group!

After holding workshops with all programme leads to discuss the UN SDGs within courses during summer 2019, we also launched the Sustainability Academic Network, which is a space for all academics to share best practice and learn about introducing and embedding ESD into their teaching. The network of over 80 staff from across faculties is welcome to all. If you are a member of staff and looking for ways to embed sustainability into your teaching and professional practice, join the Sustainability Academic Network!

A Living Lab project could focus on a wide number of topics, including energy, transport, biodiversity, wellbeing, waste, food, behaviour change, community, our buildings and much more! If your project or research could help improve the University's environmental sustainability, we would love to hear from you. You can complete a Living Lab as a student researcher within your course or as a voluntary project. If you are an academic staff member, you can be a mentor to a student or host Living Labs as part of your assessments.Any student or staff projects aiming to improve the sustainability of the University can have access to a large array of data, information, and contacts. 

Below is a list of potential future projects which you are welcome to take forwards, subject to your course requirements and discussions with the Sustainability Team. We really welcome new ideas for Living Labs research so if you have a suggestion for a project, let's talk!

Potential projects

• Staff and student interests and barriers in adopting low-carbon behaviours e.g. diet, travel 
• Improving ethical and Fairtrade offerings and uptake
• Sustainable procurement guidance and criteria development
• Air quality monitoring
• Mobility as a Service (MaaS) study
• Calculating the carbon emissions of courses
• Creating short film promoting sustainable behaviours e.g. cycling routes in Bournemouth
• Impact of local biodiversity and nature on wellbeing
• Opportunities to enhance biodiversity on campus
• Communicating sustainability within a university setting
• Impacts of Covid-19 on environmental performance
• Offsetting university emissions
• Investigation of links between wellbeing, nature and environmental sustainability

Datasets

We have an incredible amount of data at the university for you to use in your projects or courses. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Bees on campus: we have a beehive on Christchurch House that collects data on the bees behaviour. This dataset would be useful for anyone studying ecology or data science.
• Energy and carbon emissions data
• Waste data
• Food data

At BU, we have specific targets for embedding the UNSDGs into our teaching to drive action and report progress against. Our targets include:

• All programmes must align to at least one SDG by 2025/26
• All programmes must align to the climate and ecological crisis (C&EC) in the indicative content in at least one unit per level by 2025/26 (alignment to the C&EC is defined as alignment to one or more of UN SDGs 7,12,13,14 & 15)

As of June 2024, we have decided to incorporate an additional target to capture the importance of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) within the curriculum. 

• All programmes must align to equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the indicative content in at least one unit per level by 2025/26 (alignment to EDI is defined as alignment to one or both of UN SDGs 5 & 10)

Education has a vital role in addressing the climate and ecological crisis, as it can provide the knowledge, skills and values to tackle it. An objective within our CECAP is for the academic community to align education and research with the crisis, in terms of appropriate programme content, research outcomes, and the way we operate, including increasing crisis awareness and literacy. The key recommendations are to: 

• Include the climate and ecological crisis in all programmes in the indicative content of at least one unit per level by 2025/26 
• Continue to align all programmes to the UN SDGs
• Reward staff for aligning research with the crisis 
• Encourage staff and students to use BU as a Living Lab 
• Introduce staff and student development programmes, such as climate fresk and carbon literacy