O pjourneyofsustainability
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Otago Polytechnic in Dunedin, New Zealand is undertaking a journey of sustainability across its operations and academic programs. The document outlines the Polytechnic's goal for every graduate to think and act as a sustainable practitioner. It discusses engaging staff and students, benchmarking sustainability knowledge, and providing examples of how departments are integrating sustainability into their work and graduate profiles. These include the Institute of Sport focusing on topics like transportation, nutrition, and health and wellbeing. The Bachelor of Information Technology program has also incorporated sustainability into areas like software design and student projects.
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O pjourneyofsustainability
- 1. Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, New Zealand JOURNEY OF SUSTAINABILITY
- 2. Getting our house in order
- 3. Tertiary Institution Operations management view Inputs and Outputs – can apply to an individual, organisation , society… Other strands: Transport – to/from campus The Polytech does not exist in a vacuum…Community, City, Country Good examples: Harvard, Colorado, etc. The need to walk the talk! The biggest critics will be the staff, then students.
- 6. Our Vision
- 7. Process for departments in integrating sustainability:
- 10. E.G of Stocktake form
Notas del editor
- Re-branding exercise in 2004
- Started in 2005 with open forum for staff to share their ideas and expertise. Way to engage staff and see what interest and skills the Poly already had. Employed a staff member to work on Sustainable Operations for the Polytechnic as an organisation. Mark works 0.8 on this. Purchased 5 ‘Poly Bikes’ (sustainable procurement policy used) and established with a $5000 Polytechnic start up grant for good ideas from staff. Available to all staff for trips around town, recreation, meetings etc. The Polytechnic has put a significant amount of money into the sustainability initiative as we believe it is the right thing to do. Backfired in some ways when another institution asked the Government for money for integrating sustainability and the former PM Helen Clark, said look at Otago Poly, they are already doing it. Positives in that too though. Dealt with recycling – comments like ‘But we don’t even recycle our milk bottles’. Paper biggest priority. Big push to reduce printing. Now purchasing Grade 4 recycled paper – not post-consumer, but best we can do for now. Bokashi, Worm farm now, recycling bins stack. Things like establishing the recycling was lot of time and energy for little return, but important for ‘looks’. Staff needed to see this to believe the Polytech was taking it seriously. Thought with more information they would understand that it is a long way down the priority list. Hybrid training vehicle and emission testing through Automotive engineering. Living Campus begins to take shape and establishes a budget! http://www.otagopolytechnic.ac.nz/about/sustainable-practice/livingcampus.html Investigation work into converting the organisations coal burner to wood chip. Good long term savings. Building and energy management – replacing current building energy management systems with an online system so we have online control of the heating. Taking advantage of spot energy prices – when it goes up can turn heaters off for 10 mins etc. Have to have really good online control and monitoring of price changes. Switched to a slightly more expensive Meridian energy who are carbon neutral. We have to buy water so now looking at grey water systems, water collection. A report from a plumber on turning toilets solenoids down to 3 secs to save water and money. Lighting survey – replacing with T5 that use 40% less energy. Write sustainability into all purchasing policies. Sustainability clauses in all contract work. Educating staff on using sustainability criteria in purchasing. NZ Govt done a lot of work around sustainable purchasing guidelines. Available to anyone. Get sustainable criteria built into tender process – Some tenders only come up every 2 years. Converting chip oil to bio-diesel – 3 departments on boards for this. Still being talked about from 2006.
- Sustainability from an operations management view pt – inputs and outputs. sustainable teachers/students Inputs/outputs model can be applied to anyone/thing. Transport – community, council involved. Uni student did a survey to see how students/staff get to campus. Sustainability has to be happening in the community, city to make it work in the Poly. Need to submit to council plans etc. Recent submission on the draft Tertiary Education Strategy. Important part of the process includes lobbying and educating the central and local governing bodies as an organisation and as departments. Harvard, Colorado universities had sustainable programs for a decade or more. No need to reinvent the wheel. Not protected knowledge in this field. Unitech, Uni Cant etc. OP first out of the block with teaching SP across curriculum. Travel planning – bikes, bus passes, parking review on campus – free to paid system. Quite a big staff backlash to this. May not have got it quite right, but did have the effect of getting some people out of their vehicles.
- Students are the centre, everything else needs to happen in conjunction with education for sustainability
- “ The Otago Polytechnic sustainability vision is that our graduates, our practitioners and our academics understand the concepts of social, environmental and economic sustainability in order for them to evaluate, question and discuss their role in the world and to enable them to make changes where and when appropriate.”
- “ Educators must take a lead in sustainability so that our graduates can be encouraged and supported to promote sustainable practices in their chosen career. This can primarily be achieved by fostering education for sustainability in all our qualifications and by re-visioning and changing our approach to teaching and learning to model a transformative context for all learners. As a consequence sustainable practice becomes a context and a process for learning and recognised as a core capability within each discipline.” The content of what we teach in terms of sustainability is easy. It’s the process of how we teach it and what skills we want students to develop from involvement in this process. E.g. the Building/Architecture/Engineering department claim they have been doing this [sustainability] for 25 years! So why are we in the state that we’re in? As discussions continued it was evident that positive change could not be made unless you were ‘in charge’. If an apprentice spoke out about a practice they thought was unsustainable and suggested another way, they would be put in their place – probably reminded in colourful language where they were situated in the pecking order on the building site. This is an issue. Building site culture is not allowing for positive change. So how can we as educators help develop the skills of the apprentice builder so they can make positive change to the culture of the building site, therefore opening the way for positive change in practice, towards sustainability. The next block that arose was the belief that architect's (this can from an architecture drafting tutor) are there to do what the customer asks for, within their budget. Architectural drafting has been teaching sustainability for years, but the belief is that the architect is there to do what the client wants. In what ways can an architect use their skills and knowledge to attempt to influence the clients decisions on their design. Obviously in terms of structural integrity the architect along with the builder would advise a client if what they wanted was not ideal. Sustainability is no different. An architect and builder need the knowledge and skills to advise clients on what they can do in terms of sustainability within their budget and encourage them to do so. Even encouraging downsizing or forgoing the ensuite in order to be able to afford solar hot water that will save them money and the environment in the lifetime of the house. Helping people to think about the life time of the building, rather than the short term luxury they may experience. Teaching these skills has very little to do with architecture or building or even with the content of sustainability, and more to do with developing people who can communicate well, use their knowledge of the impacts made by the building and architecture industry and the positive impact it could make to convince clients to think more sustainably. They need to develop strong ethics in terms of sustainable practice and stand by these when economic sustainability allows. It’s about feeling empowered and having the skills and knowledge to act in the interests of sustainability. Therefore the focus of education needs to be on the process or how we teach. For behaviour change, confidence in action, communication, ethics. Students need to be empowered in and through their education. Here at the Polytech we need to embrace our trades background, our learning through doing approach. We need to integrate more experiential learning, student driven learning, action competence learning to develop in our students skills for making positive change in their industry. This is the hard part of the process and we’re yet to find an effective way of educating staff on this, supporting their implementation of it and monitoring the effectiveness.
- Process for departments in integrating sustainability: Engage relevant community (Permanent External Advisory Committee, PEAC) in discussion on what the role of the practitioner in the particular discipline is, for a sustainable future. What does a sustainable practitioner in ____ look like? What is the current status of sustainability in your industry? With your students? Student survey Identify graduate outcomes and core competencies for sustainability in your programmes Identify learning outcomes – course specific and holistic Exemplar resources and teaching strategies Assess lecturer expertise and establish a development plan Encourage a focus in sustainable practice research Departmental operations for sustainable practice – hidden curriculum made explicit Monitoring through Stock take forms. Gave to departments and said ‘go for it’. Not enough support, resource, upskilling of staff understanding of concept to then apply it to their ind.
- The Revised NEP (New Environmental Paradigm) Scale was used to benchmark the environmental worldview affective attributes of an incoming cohort of Otago Polytechnic students Results: Individuals in the Veterinary Nursing Department have significantly greater pro-ecological stance than the whole group (P<0.01) and individuals in the Hospitality Department have significantly lesser pro-ecological stance than the whole group (P<0.05). Students in Social Services for example show a high ‘tendency to support animal rights’ (relative to other departments) but relatively low tendencies in the other NEP factors. Midwives, on the other hand appear to be generally in favour of conservation and animal rights, suitably (from a pro-ecological standpoint) cautious about the future of the planet, but perhaps not as inclined to reduce, reuse and recycle as some other groups. Accordingly, the Polytechnic’s Sustainability Review Team may encourage teachers in Midwifery, and in Hospitality, to engage their students in activities that address concepts of ‘reduce, re-use and recycle’ to emphasise notions of the planet’s limited resources as their students have lower tendencies in this factor than in others. The Team may also encourage teachers in IT to address the Precautionary Principle as these students display a tendency to be less cautious about the future than all other groups.
- Departments to discover what a sustainable practitioner in their industry looks like. Become a problem when it was evident that staff did not fully understand the concept. Staff development workshops offered . Very poor up take of these. Difficulty in getting ‘into departments’ to educate and support integration
- Stocktake forms developed by CEO Phil Ker. Department champions called for. EfS advisors to buddy with departments and work alongside them
- Online copy of A Simple Pledge can be found at http://www.otagopolytechnic.ac.nz/about/sustainable-practice.html or by emailing me – annah@tekotago.ac.nz. A way to get staff/students onboard. May have been too early – still a tool and some info.
- “ Graduates of the Otago Institute of Sport and Adventure will understand the complexity of sustainability in society and sport in particular and will have the ability to apply sustainable practices to their sporting profession.”
- Transport minimisation such as car pooling, using public transport, providing events where minimal or equalised transportation is considered for participants; nutrition; healthy eating for optimal health and performance, antioxidant and nutritional benefits of organic food, food miles, farmers markets, GM foods grounds and facility management; including use of water in grounds maintenance, sustainable building and energy use, communication sporting products; traceability, fair trade, fuel miles, waste minimisation, rethink, reduction, redesign, reuse and recycle The understanding that physical activity has a role to play in the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders.
- Biggest area for improvement – process. Student driven/negotiated learning, action competence, empowering learning for the student. Nutrition – organic food, food miles, farmers markets etc. Event Management – requirements to make events as sustainable as possible, use of public transport, reusable resources etc. Coaching and exercise prescription – focus on transport issues, teaching/coach pedagogy – empowering for the athlete. School of Adventure: Transport biggest issue. Have the ability to engage/connect students with the natural world through what they do. Working on biofuel option with 2 other departments.
- The games and activities on Climate Change were used in the Dunedin Spring Food Festival organised by the Dunedin 350 Climate Change group, on October 24 th , the international day of Climate Change awareness. Sustainable Practices Computing and IT underpins every sector of society as a pervasive and influential discipline with global impact. As a result, computing influences the environment and society either positively or negatively. While we have seen positive benefit from incremental changes such as reductions in energy usage and recycling components, more comprehensive and transformative changes are needed to meet contemporary challenges. The vision of the School of Information Technology is that our graduates, our practitioners and our academics understand the concepts of social, environmental and economic sustainability in order for them to evaluate, question and discuss their role in the world and to enable them to make changes where and when appropriate. Our goal is that every graduate think and act as a &quot;sustainable practitioner&quot;. This way computing will be a driving influence in the creation of a sustainable future in every sector it touches. Moreover, computing educators must take a lead in sustainability so that computing practitioners can be encouraged and supported to promote sustainable use of technology. This can primarily be achieved by the fostering of sustainability as a core value of computing education. The development of this core value will be enhanced by being undertaken within a context of institutional operational practice, both at a departmental and a wider institutional level. For example, the huge amount of disposable technology – both hardware and software - currently being generated must be a concern to anyone involved in the IT industry. Our graduates must therefore understand and strive to enact sustainable behaviour. We believe in the teaching of sustainable practices, where possible and practical in our programmes.
- Graduate Profile statements – Year 3 Creation of appropriate responses to problems while thoroughly considering ethical, legal, social and cultural values and beliefs Analysis of practices and evaluation of how they fit into the natural laws governing ecosystem function The relevance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi in relation to a business context. Graduate Profile statements – Year 2 Demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the ethical, legal, social and cultural values and beliefs that guide environmental actions Evaluate the individual and community components of sustainable practice and manage processes to achieve a group goal Analyse and evaluate personal & professional practices & be accountable in implementing change strategies Graduate Profile statements – Year 1 Participate and take some responsibility for decision making and change to a more sustainable model Examples of Learning outcomes: Professional Practice for Information Technology: Demonstrate an understanding of the interrelationship between communications, information technology and environmental/social issues in both a global and New Zealand market. PC Maintenance: Identify sustainability issues involved in purchasing and disposing of a computer. I am not involved directly in the BIT so I am looking at it purely from what is written in the programme document. Aspects of sustainability are explicitly mentioned mostly in the first year. I imagine that these themes flow through the next 2 years of the degree, however that is not made explicit in the programme document. This can be problematic in terms of people outside of the programme being able to see the sustainable practice content. Ideally one day it will be a given in every subject in every area of education. It is my belief that right now it needs to be explicit before it becomes a given. It’s an evolutionary process. In saying that excessive use of the term ‘sustainability’ can be avoided as it has connotations that are different and not always positive for lots of people. It’s a fine balancing act.
- A resource for teaching staff and students rather than an online course. This is a work in progress!
- Staff development course. Not compulsory. Low up take so far, due to online component and time requirement. Another work in progress! Struggling to make it flexible enough for a full time staff member to do, while remodelling best practice in the process of teaching for sustainability. High priority for professional development requirements for the Polytechnic. Staff development conferences/workshops on this topic.