Responsible Futures
Responsible Futures (RF) is a change-making programme and accreditation framework, co-led by students, staff, academics, and the students’ unions to embed sustainability across all aspects of education.
Responsible Futures approaches the institution as a whole, enabling partnership working to weave sustainable education into the formal, informal and subliminal curriculum. Supported by SOS-UK, the University has established a working group, made up of students, educators, union representatives, and more, to engage with the framework. The framework is comprised of a set of criteria supporting change from the top-down, bottom-up and middle-out, for a whole-institution approach to embedding sustainability in learning. It includes criteria in leadership, decision-making, staff support, community outreach, and student empowerment. This ensures a holistic, racially and socially just delivery of sustainable education, co-created by students, across all aspects of university life.
What we are doing:
The working group is currently:
- collating examples of best-practice
- highlighting positive achievements of groups, departments, and individuals at the University
- looking to enhance any gaps in the delivery of sustainable education, constantly looking for new campaigns and initiatives to help
This work will culminate in a student-led audit in June 2024, whereby students take a deep-dive into the University's delivery of sustainable education.
Our working group’s current campaigns include:
- empowering and supporting students- four part-time student interns are hired to lead the group and collect evidence. Many more are a part of the working group or hired for short term projects
- partnership working- helping the Students’ Union and Students’ Guild on all campuses to improve their sustainability strategies and policies.
- supporting staff - establishing a working group to understand the confidence of staff in delivering a sustainable education
- community outreach- after winning SOS-UK's SHAPE bid for this year, groups in Penryn are being set up to solve local sustainability focused problems.
- co-creation of resources- delivering workshops on topics of interest, such as decolonised curriculums, SDGs, and climate anxiety, creating reports detailing student experience, and developing further carbon literacy resources
To join our working group or find out more please email b.lewis6@exeter.ac.uk
UPDATE: Responsible Futures Professional development survey – confidence on teaching about sustainability
Please consider filling out this short survey to help us further understand how confident our educators feel in teaching about sustainability. We are using the results of this survey to inform our practices and future campaigns and to ensure educators get the support they need in teaching about these topics. It should take you 5-10 minutes to fill it out, depending on how much you would like to say.
A link to the survey can be found here: Survey link
*Please note- if you want to see this event, ensure your VPN is turned on, to access Trent resources.
If you have any issues, questions or queries, please do send an email to r.rowe3@exeter.ac.uk. Becky is the lead student intern for Responsible Futures and oversee the survey roll out.
