Recomendations

DESIRES FOR DEVELOPMENT

The action research project as a whole recognised that each academic subject must develop its own approach to ecological justice.

Firstly, we created a set of interlinked ‘Desires for Development’ as follows:

Campus life

  • Honest, empathetic, collaborative dialogue about climate crisis and curriculum
  • Rewild the university - microcosm of a just and sustainable society
  • Tell stories of change - speakers, projects, case studies, global, local

Curriculum INTEGRATION

  • Avenues to learn to 'see' ecological justice through each discilpline's lens
  • Focus on employability for 21st century careers and issues
  • Teach alternative models e.g. Circular Economy
  • Put innovation and design at the centre

Campus as living lab

  • Keep the university community informed - via emails and permanent Our Green YSJ noticeboard
  • Create a social space for 'green conversations' to happen
  • Induct new students into York's green opportunities

Detailed recommendations from action research teams

School of the Arts

Written by Students as Researchers Avalon Garvey and Henry Dawson

  • Honesty about the gravity of the ecological crisis and what it means for students’ lives and careers
  • A common group/ground - physical space on campus for student sustainability initiatives
  • Coverage of issues in curricula, in a discipline-specific way
  • Curriculum shaped by students – students and staff as partners in creating an ecologically just university, helping redesign curricula and campus life
  • Geographic greening - a biophilic campus whose design and running reflects its values
  • Transparency about the university’s green progress and challenges encountered
  • Sustainability trumps Aesthetics as a design principle
  • Break hierarchies to enlist students as citizens and act upon their ideas and initiatives
School of Business

Written by Students as Researchers George Blaikie and Megan Coales

School of EDUCATION, LANGUAGE AND PSYCHOLOGY

Written by Students as Researchers Ryan Myhill and Nicole Nash

School of Humanities

Written by Students as Researchers Daisy Hutchinson and Sophie Blackburn

  • Include green measures as a part of sports and societies accreditation.
  • Install a permanent ‘Our Green YSJ’ board in Holgate.
  • Support and encourage alternatives to those behaviours (especially transport) that 'undo the good' that individuals do: Facilitate 'cycling buses', and invite student involvement in greening fieldtrips.
  • Create social spaces for ‘green conversations’ to happen.
  • Strike a balance between INTEGRATING and NAMING sustainability.
  • Ramp up participatory opportunities, such as Geography’s Greening the University Day.
  • MENTION the campus’s green offer - by known people rather than in anonymous emails.
  • Use Moodle to communicate about the campus’s green offer.
  • Engage students at Open Days, Welcome Week*, and beyond.
  • With new students, integrate getting to know York with getting to know York's green opportunities. As Daisy said: “Connecting to the land is relevant to any course".
  • Enhance opportunities for practical learning and demonstrations, e.g. greening your student diet.
  • ”If you’re going to do it, make it obvious”: Make things visible where students are likely to be stood waiting.
  • Engage engaged students in engaging others.
  • Include ‘sustainable study tips’ in year 1 skills modules
  • Use our green campus as ‘a microcosm of the world’!