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Sustainability at RGU

Academic Offer

Across all of our academic schools we have embedded sustainability in our curriculum so all of our students are equipped to play their role in tackling challenges as we create a sustainable future together.

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at RGU is a major strategic project of explicitly embedding sustainability in the curricula of all RGU courses.  It sits alongside the University’s strategic commitment to playing our role in creating a more sustainable future.  Professor David McClean has been leading this project by working alongside the academic schools so they can set how the courses they offer feature sustainability throughout.  ESD at RGU also forms part of our wider contribution to United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (UNSDG) 4, which is titled quality education.  Through its target seven its aims to “ensure all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.

Our ESD Aims

  1. To equip all students with the subject knowledge and skills relating to sustainability that are relevant to their field of study;
  2. To cultivate values, attitudes and behaviours that support the imperative for creating a more sustainable future;
  3. To enable each student to clearly articulate the relationship of their subject to the theme of sustainability, the role that their subject has to play in addressing the UNSDGs, and their personal position and ambitions relative to this.
  4. To empower students to contribute positively to the creation of a sustainable future.

All 11 of RGU’s academic schools were tasked with evaluating the representation of sustainability across their cross provision and drafting their own position statements on sustainability. The position statements include how sustainability is interpreted and what UNSDGs their courses align. These position statements are not set in stone and will develop and evolve with each making their own enhancements over the coming months and years.  

When it comes to teaching students, the work of each of the academic schools at the University has a wide scope and many of the modules taught falls into all of the UNSDGs in some form.

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