Green Gown Awards 2016 - Learning and Skills - Keele University - Highly Commended

The Trojan mouse of sustainability: ‘Dropping’ sustainability into education

Enabling students to learn through a sustainability ‘lens’ equips them for their lives beyond Keele.

Our approach involves ‘Trojan Mice’ that infiltrate the student and staff experience through multiple mouse holes, leaving droppings behind that fertilise further sustainability activity.

These mouse holes and ‘droppings’ occur at all levels, including high level strategy; specific sustainability degree programmes for undergraduate and postgraduate students; sustainability elective modules open to all students in the university; bespoke workshops for individual programmes developed in collaboration with a central student learning unit; multiple co-curriculum opportunities and multiple droppings through the staff development mouse hole including an ESD consultancy service, integration into compulsory training for new lecturers, workshops delivered for individual programme teams, and online training modules, amongst others. These droppings have provided fertile ground, from which have sprung many new developments driven by programme teams across the Faculties and Schools of the University, helping Keele University move towards our sustainability goals.

Top 3 learnings

1. Staff Development and Partnership; supporting staff and partners
2. Multiple droppings fertilise change: it’s not about one big thing or one scheme, but the consistent mouse holes and droppings that have contributed to a big change
3. Consultancy approach; developing bespoke workshops.