Managing and Enhancing Student-Staff Partnerships for SustainabilityJulia Kendal29th October 2013

Schedule

• Background

• Key campaigns:

– Waste Wars

– Blackout

– Swap Shop

• Results and impact

• Lessons learnt & moving forward

• Final Q&A

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Background

• University of Southampton:

– - 21,835 students (UG and PG)

– Around 5,000 staff

– 6 campuses, including one in Malaysia

• Historic, but fragmented, engagement with sustainability

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Green Academy

• Participation in Higher Education Academy Green Academy Programme was intended to bring together disparate activities into a coherent sustainability strategy focused on practice

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• Vision that emerged is for sustainability to be at the CORE of the institution

• ‘Sustainability Action Programme’

Curriculum

Operations

Research

Experience

Partnership Approach

• Sustainability Action

– Top-level support

– Student representative

– Academics

– Associate Dean for Education & Student Experience

– Environment Manager

– Staff support

• Behaviour Change Group

• Students’ Union Ethical & Environmental Committee

• Environment & Sustainability Advisory Group 6

Student-Staff Partnerships

• Vision of

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Waste Wars

• 7 years of waste audits

• Target: increase recycling from 46% in 2010/11 to 60% by July 2013

• Organised in collaboration between students and staff

• Bigger and better (now around 100 students)

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Waste Wars

• Students impacting campus management

– Recycling rates increased from 38% to over 70% in just 4 months

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• Halls Waste Wars

– Competition between different halls

– Engaging first years – good habits from the start

Blackout: a night out with the lights out• Carbon reduction target of

20% by 2020 (based on 2005 levels)

• ‘Energy Audit’!

• Focus on main campus – 34 buildings over one night

• Non-essential equipment only

• Committee of students and staff

• Run event within 8 months10

Blackout: a night out with the lights out• Training for students and

staff (energy audit experience)

• Crucial role of students & staff

– Keys are key

– Demonstrating student appetite for sustainability (showing staff what they should be doing)

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Blackout Results

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Demonstrated that if everyone switches off every night the annual savings would be:• Over £200,000 • 858 tonnes of carbon• 2,033,131 kWh

An award-winning initiative

Blackout 2013: bigger & better

• 2 more campuses

• 324 students signed up

Applying lessons learnt:

• Are all the incentives necessary?

• Need for repeating and reinforcing the message

• Need for consistency in the training for audit completion

• Importance of active student partnership & joint leadership

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Blackout Impact

• Student engagement:

– Hundreds of students engaged and trained

– all 8 faculties represented

– Not just the usual suspects

• Staff engagement:

– 3463 individuals read first post (2nd

most read post ever)

– 3184 individuals read results

• Energy use change:

– Behaviour change

– Infrastructure change14

Swap Shop

Now for something slightly different:

•Not just about “being green”

•Working with societies

•Engaging with Fashion & Style Society

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Swap Shop: Results

• 156 people

• 215 kg of clothes, shoes and accessories rescued from landfill/wallowing in wardrobes

• £39.42 raised for RAG

• Anything not swapped to British Heart Foundation to sell

• New volunteers

All for the cost of £5.00. 16

Student-Staff Partnerships:Impact

• Engagement and behaviour change

• Operational change:

– Recycling rates

– IT Power Management Policy for Common Learning Spaces

• Strategic change:

– SUSU Sustainability Zone

– University: shift from the environment to sustainability

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Lessons learnt

• Collaboration is key

– Organising events with, not for, students

– Value of student representation & ideas

– Empowering students to influence staff behaviour & the wider university community

• Evaluation - challenging our assumptions

• Creating a culture of personal responsibility

• Make it fun and the norm

• Get the right incentives

• Empowered for action 18

Lessons learnt

• Appropriate recognition

– Consistent messaging about partnership

– Equal value on students and staff

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What’s next?

• Engaging with societies (the Swap Shop Model)

• Business Ethics & Environment Students (BEES) Programme

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– Students auditing ethical and environmental practice in local businesses

– Student employability

– Staff engagement

– Students having a positive impact on the local community

– Students demonstrating importance to University management & wider city

– Students shaping the curriculum

Conclusions

• Ensure students & staff work together from the very start of all sustainability projects

• Attitude of a university community of students and staff

• Make it the norm

• One size doesn’t fit all

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Thank you for listening.

Any questions?

Julia Kendal: j.kendal@soton.ac.uk; @JuliaRKendal

Sustainability Action Officer, University of Southampton

www.southampton.ac.uk/sustainabilityaction