University is First Class for Sustainability
The University of Gloucestershire has been awarded a ‘first class honours’ in this year’s University Green League, complied by the People & Planet student campaign group.
And the University has come in second for its green credentials out of 133 British universities, bettering last year’s position of fifth place. This year’s table is topped by the University of Plymouth.
The Green League is the only league table that measures the environmental performance of universities. Published in the Times Higher magazine on 10 June, the table awards universities a First, 2:1, 2:2, Third or Fail based on nine environmental criteria. The University of Gloucestershire has scored full marks on policy, staff, auditing and management systems, sustainable procurement, Fairtrade status and staff/student engagement.
Professor Daniella Tilbury, Director of Sustainability at the University of Gloucestershire is delighted with the news.
“The University sees sustainability as a process of continuous improvement and thus value the feedback provided by the People and Planet rankings. This approach means that experience and learning from experience is important to us. I think it explains why we are the only University to have sustained its position in the top five of the Green League since its inception in 2007.
“Over the last 12 months we have published a carbon strategy, incorporated sustainability into staff induction, invested in voltage optimisation, developed a sustainability education teaching and learning framework, supported the student allotment and black-out projects, sought ways to use ICT more efficiently and scaled up our sustainability procurement efforts. Perhaps most importantly, we took our time to appoint new University caterers so to ensure that sustainability also underpins their current practice.”
Director of People & Planet, Ian Leggett said:
"People & Planet congratulates all those universities which achieved First Class awards in this year's Green League. Their success is a tribute to sustained leadership and comprehensive efforts to achieve the necessary transition to a low-carbon higher education sector. But we can’t leave it to a small number of leading institutions: all universities must play their part and take urgent and ambitious environmental action now. This year's Green League shows us that too many in the sector are not responding to the challenge."
The University of Gloucestershire has established a reputation for sustainability as the first English University to achieve the ISO14001 environmental management system across all of its activities.
Sustainable development underpins every aspect of University life, including teaching, research, knowledge transfer and the conduct of its business.
The University is featured as a case study on the People & Planet website.
Green Gown Awards
The University won the 2010 Green Gown Award for Continuous Improvement: Specific Area with a submission on teaching and learning for sustainability entitled 'Step Changes: Education for Sustainability at the University of Gloucestershire'. This was the first time a Green Gown Award had been given for implementing education for sustainability.
The University of Gloucestershire was short-listed in five categories in the 2010 Green Gown Awards. This was the highest number for any institution this year, the next highest being three categories. The other four categories and project titles were as follows:
- Green ICT - with a submission on 'Hardware for hard times'
- Skills - with a submission based on the 'Soundings in Sustainability Literacy' process and outputs
- Student Initiatives and Campaigns - with a submission from the Student's Union entitled 'A Greener, More Ethical Union'
- Sustainable Procurement - with a submission entitled 'Sustainable Procurement at UoG: A Learning Experience'
More details here.
Universities That Count
The University of Gloucestershire features in the top 5 of Universities That Count (UTC) as reported in the Times Higher Education Supplement. The University’s achievements in education for sustainability have been a key factor in this success. The UTC Teaching, Learning and Research score for the University of Gloucestershire was 91.6% with the sector average being 60.5% and it was rated by UTC as an “Outstanding Achievement". A detailed breakdown of the Teaching, Learning and Research score for the University is as follows with sector average scores in brackets:
- University Commitment - 71% (54%)
- Scoping Exercise - 100% (71%)
- Action Planning - 100% (65%)
- Assessment & Reporting - 92% (49%)
- Quality Assurance - 100% (79%)
- Performance Improvement - 87% (42%)
This is an important achievement and one which was listed as an ambition in the Corporate Plan for 2009-10.
PRISM Seminar
PRISM stands for Postgraduate Researchers Interested in Sustainability Matters and the group is run out of IRIS through a JISCmail email list. On 30 June a Prism seminar was led by Jo Anna Reed Johnson to explore critical realism as a research paradigm for sustainability. A report on the seminar can be read here.
Glenn Strachan
Glenn will be leaving his post as Senior Research Fellow at IRIS in July this year to spend more time working on his PhD research. Glenn will continue his relationship with IRIS by becoming a Visiting Research Fellow.