South East Technological University (SETU) launched a new partnership with Technological University Shannon (TUS) recently. This partnership includes three joint initiatives that are under development as part of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Community of Practice (CoP).
The initiatives include developing the shared sustainability knowledge hub, climate fresk game programme, and carbon literacy programme.
The launch was opened by Dr Nataliya Romanyatova, Postdoctoral Researcher in ESD, Digital Transformation and Academic Integrity.
“This is a great start to a hopefully long-lasting partnership. It is aimed at several initiatives to help our shared ESD Community of Practice exchange ideas, best practice and experience in embedding sustainable development goals.”
Hybrid event
SETU staff were joined by colleagues from TUS during this hybrid event held both online and in person.
Dr Marie Taylor, Senior Project Officer in the Sustainable Development Research Institute, and Elaine Cleary, EU Project Researcher, from TUS introduced the Green Hive Sustainable Development Learning platform and what opportunities it brings for SETU and TUS staff.
Dr Taylor commented, “We are delighted to part taking in this CoP which is focused on sustainable development education. The overall objective of Green Hive is to teach trainers and educators to prepare learners for education focused on sustainability and to provide support in terms of mentoring, peer learning and exchange of educational resources.”
Sustainability workshop
The event was followed by the curriculum design innovations workshop on sustainability across disciplines. Juergen Bauer, SETU architecture lecturer, talked about the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals and how they can inform architectural design.
Kirk McCormac, Head of the Architectural Technologies Department at Technological University Dublin (TUD), introduced a project ‘What can 60 students learn about sustainability by sleeping in a field for a night?’.
The event featured great discussions and the opportunity to reflect on approaches that can be applied across all disciplines.
Embedding sustainable development goals
Dr Paul O’Leary, Head of Quality Promotion and Policy Development at SETU, closed the event, commenting that, “When it comes to sustainability and embedding it into teaching and learning, it’s not just about ‘we will survive’, as presented by Kirk McCormac. It’s more that ‘we can do it’ combined with ‘what did we learn’. We don’t need to teach all 17 SDGs in one module, but we can let our students decide themselves what they would like to engage with the most.”
The ESD CoP initiative is led by Dr Nataliya Romanyatova through SATLE. For more information, please email at [email protected]