Technological University Dublin\u27s Pathway to Embedding Sustainability in Food Degrees, NEMOS and Beyond

The School of Food Science and Environmental Health, Technological University Dublin, commenced a journey to embed Sustainability in its modules and programmes in 2020 with a nationally funded project ‘Sustainable Food Curriculum Co-Create’. The project’s goal was to build capacity for integrating sustainability learning outcomes across Food programmes through educator professional development and co-creation with students. The CPD curriculum design involved several stakeholders in Education for Sustainable Development from across the Food System including enterprise and state organisations who advised on sector-specific sustainability issues, food experts from across several Schools, and sustainability experts from across the University and beyond. It also was informed by industry publications and policy frameworks. In 2021, the School commenced the European Erasmus partnership NEMOS – A new educational model for acquisition of sustainability competences through service-learning. Using a TU Dublin designed sustainability mapping tool, our BSc Food Innovation degree was analysed for current levels of sustainability, based on the AASHE Stars categorisation. Through research involving internal and external stakeholders, barriers to sustainability were identified, and categorised as economical, supply chain issues, labour, knowledge, awareness, investment, government, human nature, climate change, environmental, social sustainability, capitalism, low adoption of Innovation, and food safety. Meanwhile, key food related Sustainability concepts that will be useful to inform the review of food degrees were identified and categorised as Farming Practices, Climate change direct impacts, Environmental, Agrifood Circular Bioeconomy, Waste reduction, Measuring and benchmarking, Food Safety and Regulatory Affairs, Food product development, Sustainable and Ethical Food Business. In all, 70 competencies were identified. In this special session, TU Dublin will outline the CPD module for enhancing lecturer capacity for embedding sustainability in the curriculum, the TU Dublin curriculum mapping tool for measuring sustainability, and provide an Irish and European context for sustainability competencies

Grassroot Power of Communities of Practice – The Case of SDG Literacy

With emerging consensus on an urgent need to address the potentially catastrophic issues of climate change, threats to the natural world and social injustice, Generation Z is spearheading a quiet revolution, elevating sustainability from desirable to essential. Achievement of the UN SDGs has emerged as a megatrend (Mittelsaedt et al., 2014) and universities are playing a key role in developing graduates’ sustainability knowledge, skills and mindsets (Andrews and Soares, 2017). To empower our students to solve ‘wicked sustainability problems’ (Levin et al., 2012) we, as educators, need to move beyond our discipline silos and develop cross-disciplinary collaborations that lead to innovations in our teaching, learning and assessment. We will present exemplars in practice emerging from a university-wide Community of Practice (CoP) (Wenger, 2015) in sustainability literacy called SDG Literacy which was established in 2020. The comprehensive nature of the SDG framework has brought colleagues from various disciplines together, such as business, engineering, chemistry, tourism, culinary arts and social work. The SDG Literacy CoP focuses on and promotes the enhancement of sustainability literacy and organically developing some of the key competencies listed under the new European GreenComp framework (Bianchi et al., 2022) among faculty and student cohorts. These growing impactful initiatives are aligned with Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and the broader strategic aims of the university. Collaborative initiatives emerged such as co-creation of CPD in Education for Sustainability for staff, sustainability focused modules for students from different disciplines, creation of open educational resources (OERs), regular showcases of excellence of practice events, integrated assessments and development of collaborative industry-based partnerships. The SDG Literacy CoP and its growing influence within the university is an excellent example of the power of grassroot cross-disciplinary communities of practice to catalyse the promotion of sustainability strongly supported by our students - future leaders - and matched by the strategic university focus on people, planet and partnerships. In a call to action, we hope to inspire participants, by our story, to apply ideas of interdisciplinarity in practice. References Andrews, D., & Soares, S. (2017). Growing spaces: developing a sustainability–literate graduate. In DS 88: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE17), Building Community: Design Education for a Sustainable Future, Oslo, Norway, 7 & 8 September 2017 (pp. 328-333). Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U. and Cabrera Giraldez, M., (2022). GreenComp The European sustainability competence framework, (No. JRC128040). Joint Research Centre (Seville site). Levin, K., Cashore, B., Bernstein, S., & Auld, G. (2012). Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change. Policy sciences, 45(2), 123-152. Mittelstaedt, J. D., Shultz, C. J., Kilbourne, W. E., & Peterson, M. (2014). Sustainability as megatrend: Two schools of macromarketing thought. Journal of Macromarketing, 34(3), 253-264. Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner,B. (2015). Introduction to Communities of Practice Available at: https://wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice

Level 9 CPD Module Educating for Food Sector Sustainability

Module Descriptor for lecturer professional development in Educating for Food Sustainability. In response to SDG 4.7, which requires learners acquire knowledge and skills for sustainability, this module addresses a gap identified by the National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development in the ‘preparedness of lecturers to facilitate the type of participatory learning’ associated with balancing social and economic well-being with Earth’s ability to replenish its natural resources. For food-sector educators committed to embedding sustainability in their academic practice, this module aims to develop a community of practice, comprising faculty, students, industry and community that can support authentic and transformative living-lab experiences for a sustainable future of our food systems. Deploying inquiry-based, evidence-based and action-learning approaches, this module focuses on addressing future-of-food issues within a holistic framework informed by the 4 Cs of culture, campus, curriculum and community as a means for transforming food-sector higher education

Exploring the impact of authentic assessment on sustainability literacy through reflective and action-oriented tasks: A roundtable podcast

Business schools must engage in fundamental change to retain their legitimacy and position themselves as providers of solutions to urgent economic, social, and environmental crises. To this end, we need pedagogy that enables students to become sustainability literate graduates and thus develop appropriate knowledge, skills, and mind-sets. This roundtable discussion podcast comprises six colleagues engaged in conversation and reflection around a pedagogical initiative designed with the broad aim of enhancing sustainability literacy among business students using innovative digital tools as part of an authentic assessment strategy. The pedagogical approaches we discuss engage students with learning across several different modes and in a ‘deep’ reflective manner (Meyers & Nulty, 2009).  We discuss our use of the UN supported Sulitest platform, specifically our use of the Sulitest quiz tool. The podcast transcript has been annotated through footnotes to direct the listener/reader to further reading on the various topics that emerge in our discussion

Level 8 Module Food Sector Sustainability

Optional Module (Level 8) in Food Sector Sustainabiliyt. In response to SDG 4.7, this module contributes to the National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development’s objective of “equipping learners with relevant knowledge, skills and values for becoming informed active citizens who take action for a more sustainable future”. For food-sector students committed to embedding sustainability in their professional learning and practice, this module explores how we can transform our food systems to be more resilient, ensuring the safe and nutritious food for everyone. It aims to provide authentic and transformative living-lab experiences of sustainable food systems through a community of practice, comprising faculty, students, industry and community stakeholders. The module will provide a comprehensive overview of sustainable development goals (SDGs), targets and policies relating to food systems, diets and nutrition and the design-thinking processes underpinning the co-creating innovative solutions to complex food sustainability challenges

Key questions in marine mammal bioenergetics

This work was funded by the Marine Mammal Commission (MMC19-173). The Office of Naval Research funded the bioenergetic workshop (N000142012392) that provided support for this work.Bioenergetic approaches are increasingly used to understand how marine mammal populations could be affected by a changing and disturbed aquatic environment. There remain considerable gaps in our knowledge of marine mammal bioenergetics, which hinder the application of bioenergetic studies to inform policy decisions. We conducted a priority-setting exercise to identify high-priority unanswered questions in marine mammal bioenergetics, with an emphasis on questions relevant to conservation and management. Electronic communication and a virtual workshop were used to solicit and collate potential research questions from the marine mammal bioenergetic community. From a final list of 39 questions, 11 were identified as ‘key’ questions because they received votes from at least 50% of survey participants. Key questions included those related to energy intake (prey landscapes, exposure to human activities) and expenditure (field metabolic rate, exposure to human activities, lactation, time-activity budgets), energy allocation priorities, metrics of body condition and relationships with survival and reproductive success and extrapolation of data from one species to another. Existing tools to address key questions include labelled water, animal-borne sensors, mark-resight data from long-term research programs, environmental DNA and unmanned vehicles. Further validation of existing approaches and development of new methodologies are needed to comprehensively address some key questions, particularly for cetaceans. The identification of these key questions can provide a guiding framework to set research priorities, which ultimately may yield more accurate information to inform policies and better conserve marine mammal populations.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

'We don't need no education?': Moving towards the integration of tertiary education and entrepreneurship

The popular media image of the successful entrepreneur is a no-nonsense, all-action, money-generating innovator who is also a college dropout (Scarborough, 2010). The perception would suggest that formal education relies on pedagogies that are irrelevant to entrepreneurs and that the very things entrepreneurs do best, creating products, developing ‘know-who’ and an ability to sell (Aronsson, 2004) are taught inadequately in higher education. This chapter takes issue with the perception that higher education is inappropriate for entrepreneurial development and chronicles profound changes (Wilson, 2008) in this sector to adapt to a new entrepreneurial paradigm. This chapter aims to: articulate an understanding of the partial truths and inaccuracies of what can be regarded as a myth; highlight the growing role of higher education in creating entrepreneurial graduates; and assess the credibility gap that still lingers between entrepreneurs and educators. Overall we propose that entrepreneurship educators advocate that aspects of entrepreneurship can be taught as a distinctive management process (Engel, 2007) and pedagogical approaches can be deployed to develop enterprising behaviours (Kearney, 2010). The chapter explores some approaches to embedding entrepreneurship across the curriculum and assesses whether or not its initiatives are likely to yield dividends in creating entrepreneurial graduates