Wednesday 08-11-2017 - 09:26

Today at the 4th annual Student Sustainability Summit, we are very excited to be launching our first ever “SDG teach-in”

 

We are asking educators across UK universities and colleges to pledge to include the UN Sustainable Development Goals in their teaching, learning, and assessment during the week of 19th to 23rd February 2018.

The 17 ‘Global Goals’ set out targets to end poverty, protect the planet, and achieve prosperity for all by 2030. The SDG teach-in will help raise awareness of why the SDGs should be at the heart of further and higher education, and catalyse the change needed to make this happen!

As Robbie Young, Vice President Society and Citizenship at NUS outlined in his inspiring speech at the Summit this morning: 

“Despite the growing pressure from students and young people around the globe, our institutions and governments are not leading on sustainability in the ways we wish they would ... We need our educators to be bringing sustainability into every course, at every college and university across the UK. We need a generation of future leaders who are ready to tackle the world’s greatest environmental and social challenges.”

Across the student movement, the message is loud and clear: students want their institutions to be taking sustainability seriously and they want to be taking action on it themselves. Just this week, we completed the eighth year of our annual Sustainability Skills Research which asks students in FE and HE of their expectations and understanding of sustainability. Once again we’ve heard from students that:

• 85% believe that sustainable development is something which universities and colleges should actively incorporate and promote
• And 70% agree that sustainable development should be incorporated in all courses

We will be sharing useful resources that show how the SDGs link to all academic disciplines, and featuring your stories about the innovative ways you are embedding the SDGs into your courses. We will regularly update the website to show how many academics have pledged, and how many students will be reached – can your institution make it on to our leader board?

 

The first ever SDG teach-in is taking place 19-23 February 2018.
Find out more here
Pledge your support here