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The University of Plymouth has come second in the Green League for the second year running - making them our best performing uni over both years.
Here are some of the factors behind their success:
The 4Cs of sustainability
University of Plymouth: Centre for Sustainable Futures
The sustainability performance and achievements of the University of Plymouth were recognized in 2004 when Plymouth was awarded a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning — Education for Sustainable Development (CETL ESD) by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Since the Centre — known as the Centre for Sustainable Futures (CSF) — opened in June 2005, Plymouth has been systematically widening and deepening its sustainability commitments in the light of the CETL five-year remit to transform the university into ‘an institution modeling university-wide excellence’ in sustainability.
What is special about Plymouth’s sustainability approach is the institutional embrace of a comprehensive ‘4C’ model of sustainability, linking Curriculum (discipline-based and interdisciplinary curriculum development), Campus (embedding sustainability in estates’ practices, as well as within equality and diversity obligations), Community (developing partnerships to take forward local and regional sustainability agendas) and Culture (revising institutional norms and practices in the light of the sustainability imperative). More and more students are being encouraged to undertake campus action research projects into, say, the sustainability of buildings, landscaping, procurement and catering ethics and practices as part of their courses while significantly more learning is taking place off campus linked to regional sustainability initiatives and projects. Linking Curriculum and Campus has enabled academics and estates professionals to work together with hitherto unprecedented levels of collegiality and respect. A Campus as Learning Resource initiative is using multi-media to interpret all campus sustainability developments, making them potentially rich learning opportunities (with advice for academics on how to embed such learning within courses).
Alongside the ‘4C’ model, Plymouth has adopted a holistic, multi-dimensional interpretation of sustainability that, while taking the environment as fundamental, also embraces cultural, economic, health, social justice and other sustainability dimensions. This has helped galvanize faculties and schools behind the sustainability agenda that might otherwise not have seen its relevance to their discipline.
Plymouth is different, too, in that it has a Sustainability Policy that emerged from a ‘wide and deep’ consultation with the university community. It is often said that sustainability needs to involve engagement, participation and giving voice to all. Plymouth tried to live up to that in developing the policy, which was formally approved in July 2007. A Sustainability Strategic Action Plan (SSAP), itself the outcome of a Summer 2007 ‘wide and deep’ consultation, gives concrete direction for actualizing policy. Its 73 actions involve devolved leadership to individuals and teams across the university, all members of the university being able to check on progress using an SSAP Tracking Facility.
73 actions means a lot is happening on many fronts! Virtually no stone is being left unturned as the university embeds sustainability criteria in, to cite a few areas, research and innovation, procurement, transport, staff and student well-being initiatives, student personal development profiling, and marketing strategies.
Using the mechanism of buying out academics as Centre Fellows, CSF has so far been able to take forward sustainability-related curriculum development across seven of the university’s eight faculties and thirteen of its eighteen schools. In this way a Plymouth learning experience is, for increasing numbers of students, a sustainability learning experience.
David Selby, Director, Centre for Sustainable Futures
Alan Dyer, Associate Director, Centre for Sustainable Futures
