30 - Carmen Primo Perez

Title

A win-win approach for students and sustainability

Author(s)

Carmen Primo Perez*, Commercial Services and Development
Corey Peterson, Commercial Services and Development
Kim Beasy, Commercial Services and Development
Millie Rooney, Commercial Services and Development
Kamal Singh, Commercial Services and Development

Subtheme

Students as Partners and Building an Inclusive Culture

Presentation Type

Spotlight on Practice

Room

Lecture Theatre

Time

11.30-12.30

Abstract

The UTAS Sustainability Team is a small team (2.2FTE staff, plus occasional casual employees) which oversees all sustainability operations at the University including: energy, carbon emissions, waste, transport, water, procurement, natural and built environment. The team is tasked with the development, implementation, review, evaluation and promotion of whole of University sustainability projects and activities.
Collecting data for sustainability (and many other disciplines!) is a necessary but often onerous and time-consuming activity. Therefore, any assistance that the sustainability team can get will significantly facilitate their labour and contribute to achieving sustainability outcomes for UTAS. And what better way to do this than making it an active learning and real-life experience for students!
The University of Tasmania encourages learning and teaching strategies/plans that include active learning and leaving laboratory-type activities as an important element of the student experience. One of the goals of the University’s Strategic Plan is ‘to enhance our education programs by engaging with society and environment, thereby (…) providing real world experiences’ (University of Tasmania 2012a, p. 5). Additionally, the University’s Strategic Plan for Learning and Teaching states that learning is a student-centred and social concept, and recognises the importance of students engaging in their own learning, the importance of staff – students’ interactions being reciprocal, and the efficacy of experiential and participatory pedagogies (University of Tasmania 2012b).
The Sustainability Integration Program for Students (SIPS – originally AOSIP) is designed to provide students with various opportunities for engaging with sustainability on campus and to support academic staff to integrate these opportunities into the curriculum. In this ‘spotlight on practice’ we focus on sustainable transport and present two interrelated SIPS projects to illustrate how SIPS works: sustainable transport data collection, and the development of a mobile app to facilitate and improve data collection. Ethical approval was not required for these projects.
References:
University of Tasmania 2012a, Open to Talent: Strategies 2012 – onwards, University of Tasmania, viewed 13 October 2016, http://www.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/876925/OPEN-TO-TALENT-STRATEGIES.PDF.
University of Tasmania 2012b, Strategic Plan for Learning and Teaching 2012-2014 (2015 extension), University of Tasmania, viewed 13 October 2016, http://www.utas.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/268160/Strategic-Plan-for-Learning-and-Teaching-2015-Extension-for-Council-March-2015.pdf.

Resource

Download presentation (requires University of Tasmania login) (PDF)