Sustainability within education (AY 2023-2024)
View the recording of the lunchtime lecture on 18 April 2024 "Practice what you teach and preach - sustainable campus TU Delft" by Prof Andy van den Dobbelsteen, Sustainability Coordinator at TU Delft.
In academic year 2023-2024, 'Sustainability within education' is the educational theme at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture [FEA]. The goals is to create more awareness and to initiate a process so that sustainability education eventually becomes self-evident within all faculty programmes. In the past year the faculty’s vision on sustainability has been defined (led by an ad hoc group under coordination of Prof. Michel De Paepe and Prof. Kim Verbeken) and the annual theme has been concretised through a number of well-targeted teasers.
As the faculty vision also exudes, sustainability is pre-eminently a theme that requires broad involvement of various actors. Therefore various actions will be taken throughout the year that will alternately target students, lecturers, programmes and the entire faculty. These group-specific actions together constitute the spearheads of the new educational year theme.
Fair trade breakfast café for lecturers and students, serving as a general, visible kick-off of the new educational year theme
In October 2023, the Faculty took advantage of the Fairtrade Week to open up the teaching year theme for the new academic year.
UPDATE: A second edition will take place on Thursday, March 28, with a program similar to the first one: a sustainable breakfast offer, dito conversations and a series of stands with inspiring projects and organizations.
Lecturers who want to incorporate sustainability in their course unit can sign up for a committed workshop series
Specifically for lecturers, we found Prof. Katrien Van Poeck (Centre for Sustainable Development - Ghent University) willing to provide a workshop series within the new educational year theme.
In this series of 'Lesson Design Workshops', we will work together to integrate sustainability education into your course. The workshops aim at lecturers at the FEA who want to include sustainability issues (more prominently) in their courses. The course does not need to focus entirely on sustainability, because we will illustrate that sustainability issues can often be incorporated and addressed in a relevant and engaging way. The workshop series are open to both lecturers who already pay attention to sustainability education, and those who want to work on it in the future.
UPDATE: The last of the three workshops will take place on March 13, 2024 (contact kco.ea@ugent.be).
Programmes will in turn be supported in shaping their own sustainability vision and its implementation
In collaboration with the Centre for Sustainable Development, support will be developed in shaping an educational vision on sustainability, as also described within the faculty vision text. The support in question should be regarded purely as an offer to the programs to create such a vision and an accompanying action plan in the course of this academic year.
UPDATE: In the meantime, pilot projects are underway within the Computer Science Engineering (OCingwC) and Information Engineering Technology (OCindwI) programmes and a broader rollout to the other Study Programme Committees is being developed.
Finally, the Faculty Educational Services further explore how the development of sustainability competences can be (even) better and more sustainably built into the various courses at our faculty. Ideally, this will result in some well-aimed handles that teaching teams can work with, especially within project courses. At the Faculty Education Day on May 11, 2023, a workshop on collaborative competences already resulted in some clear design principles that will gratefully be taken into account in this further trajectory on sustainability competences.
UPDATE: On the faculty's education day of May 22, 2024, the guidance teams from all project courses in the various (bachelor's) years will be invited to a workshop that aims to align expectations regarding sustainability competencies over the years and communicate them clearly to the students. The participants go home with ready-to-use materials.
Throughout the academic year, a number of specific activities and incentives will be provided for students
As indicated above, the Breakfast Café is also open to students and their representatives. Some other actions (in particular the organisation of a creathons, incentives for more sustainability "Zwijnaardse Feesten" and a possible evaluation of the sustainability reflection required for industrial engineers as part of their master's thesis) require further consideration.
Furthermore, the support material for programmes will explicitly put students and their representatives forward as partners in the development of a programme vision on sustainability - complete with accompanying implementation and communication. This is one of the ways in which the faculty encourages students to fully unleash the sustainability potential of their education through constructive dialogue with lecturers and programmes, as is literally described in its faculty vision.
UPDATE: In the meantime, the organization of a creathon has been expanded to a collaboration with the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering and the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration that is currently still under construction. Concerning the "Zwijnaardse Feesten", the faculty offers the student associations personnel support in making their event more sustainable. An evaluation of the mandatory sustainability reflection in the master's thesis for industrial engineering students is included in the process surrounding the master's dissertation by the Faculty Assessment Committee (FTC).
A few (reusable) carriers make the initiatives and evolutions within the year theme continuously visible
Thanks to a well-chosen carrier, the teaching year themes will also be more emphatically present on various campuses where teaching activities of our faculty take place. In addition to being a clear signboard for the Faculty Educational Services, the carrier also provides a sustainable workplace for passers-by looking for it in a dead moment between two activities. Moreover a suggestion box provides an alternative, low-threshold channel to reach the faculty education support service.
UPDATE: Meanwhile all three desks are in place (iGent, Kortrijk, Plateau) and can now be brought to life. In the medium term, the desks will continue to serve as a sustainable showcase for the educational year themes to come.
Finally the Faculty Education Day provides space for a review and evaluation
At the Faculty Education Day on May 11, 2023, Prof. Van Poeck's presentation 'Sustainability in teaching practice' already gave an idea of the sustainability track within the 'Cross-course Project'. As usual, the Faculty Education Day in 2024 will provide a picture of what has been achieved within the educational year theme and introduce the coming year theme.
UPDATE: During the faculty education day on Wednesday, May 22, 2024, the team of the Faculty Educational Services will shift the focus from "sustainability" to "Artificial Intelligence" in education - the educational year theme for 2024-2025.
We hope the above actions will act as a stimulus for their respective target groups to set up other initiatives within this year's annual theme. Through our combined efforts, we will truly make our faculty's education more sustainable in the coming years.