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UCL Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Network

Staff and students can connect and exchange best practices in ESD through online and in-person events—such as Sandpits and Show and Tells—coordinated by the ESD Network.

Aims

UCL's Sustainability Strategy and UCL SDGs Initiative Strategy makes the commitment that at UCL every student will have the opportunity to study and be involved in sustainability. This network aims to:

  • Foster a network to support staff and students interested in growing Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) practice at UCL;
  • Create a space for sharing resources and case studies, and for collaborating to help grow ESD at UCL;
  • Identify needs and opportunities to improve ESD at UCL and share these across our community;

Join UCL's ESD Network TEAMS site

View our ESD Network Resource Hub

Events

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Sustainable Education

Photograph of Chemist Andrea Sella

ESD definition

ESD is defined by UNESCO (2021) as: 

The process of equipping students with the knowledge and understanding, skills and attributes needed to work and live in a way that safeguards environmental, social and economic wellbeing, in the present and for future generations.” 

UCL's ESD Steering Group has applied Institute Of Education’s Professor Tristan McCowan’s curriculum topography approach to climate change in HE. McCowan1 conceives the role of the university ‘as curating a diverse environment of learning experiences – taught, self-directed and through peer collaboration – in distinct spaces within and beyond the campus and virtual space of the institution’ – in short, the classroom, campus, and community. 

At UCL, based on these principals and the above interpretation of ESD, we suggest our interpretation of ESD could be given effect through a ‘Four Corners’ approach:  

  • Welcome: A ‘sustainability induction’ - All students are introduced to the concepts of sustainability and how to be a sustainable citizen during their time at UCL;
  • Sustainability in the classroom – All students receive discipline relevant sustainability knowledge during their taught programme;
  • Digging deeper, the Interdisciplinary offer – All students have the option to further their sustainability knowledge through interdisciplinary learning;  
  • Extra-curricular sustainability opportunities  ;

> Information on UCL's ESD Steering Group

1- https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10142639/