The Education for Sustainability (EfS) team was established in 2012 with the appointment of the university-wide role of Director of Education for Sustainability, which holds responsibility for embedding sustainability in the curriculum and wider student experience, and supports wider civic sustainability contributions. In 2012 three part-time, fixed-term Sustainability Project Officers were appointed to support this work. These have been replaced by a permanent full-time member of staff (Sustainability Project Officer), in addition to three rolling paid student intern positions. The team has formal linkages into the work of the University Estates Directorate through the Environmental Manager.
The EfS team aims to ensure that every student at Keele graduates with a ‘sustainability lens’, which is carried out through a multi-stranded approach covering all aspects of student-facing university life. Students gain this approach through three key forms of learning – the formal curriculum as part of their degree (lectures, labs, fieldwork), the informal/co-curriculum through opportunities outside their degree (volunteering, clubs and societies), and the hidden curriculum through messaging picked up through examples set by the institution (eg electric vehicles/recycling infrastructure).
The EfS team prides itself on working collaboratively with staff and students to embed a distributed responsibility approach to sustainability throughout the University. This is supported through extensive training opportunities, consultation and sharing of practice from within Keele and beyond, and working with students as partners in changing practice and processes within the University. The collaborative approaches applied daily in the EfS team empowers staff and students to lead on projects and build relationships with key stakeholders, and delivers for students experiential learning opportunities that promote employability and personal reflection.
The work undertaken by the EfS team has social and environmental value and impact beyond the campus from sharing practice and disseminating reflections on research-informed practice, to national and international collaborations and projects, and through the students who are empowered to become agents of change in the communities to which they belong.