Building the sustainable university: examples

UCL’s symposium on the concept of the sustainable university on 19 September 2008, organised by the Faculty of Laws and the Environment Institute and sponsored by UKCLE, highlighted a range of examples of good practice.

Read the report of the day and take inspiration from the examples below, from law and beyond. If you know of a further example, contact UKCLE on e-mail: ukcle@warwick.ac.uk.

Active community participation

• UCL’s Centre for Law and the Environment operates student internships with several NGOs and agencies, and hosts an annual conference in partnership with Friends of the Earth
• Kent Law Clinic – an example of law students applying their legal skills to social and environmental problems in their locality
• the Faculty of Law at Bar Ilan University (Israel) runs an extensive clinical programme, including an environmental clinic – all students are required to carry out clinical work in one of six subject areas, assessed as part of their degree
• the University of Brighton prides itself that “the town is its campus” and has strong links with local schools, hospitals and housing associations, a result of the vocational orientation of many of its degrees; the Community University Partnership Programme works with academics, researchers and community groups

Student involvement

• the University of Bradford’s Ecoversity project is a cultural change programme with sustainable development as the basis for re-imagining what the university stands for; it has created an effective forum for dialogue and communication between students, staff and administration in the form of The Seed (PDF file), a newspaper edited by a member of staff but with articles written by students
• UCL’s You Have the Power blog and website provides an opportunity for dialogue between staff and students on efforts to reduce the university’s carbon footprint
• the Centre for Law and the Environment at UCL encourages graduates to return to help build a practical aspect into its degree programmes

Curriculum development

• at the symposium Andreas Philippoulos-Mihilopoulos (University of Westminster) presented an overview of an environmental law course (PDF file), which pursues an interdisciplinary approach way beyond the ‘teaching about/teaching for’ sustainability dichotomy
• UKCLE is developing a set of case studies on education for sustainable development in law
• how sustainable is your course? STAUNCH (Sustainability Tool for Auditing for University Curricula in Higher Education) grades course descriptions against 36 economic, environmental and social criteria and cross-cutting themes such as ethics

Last Modified: 30 June 2010