Scholarship - teaching and learning
Depending on the vision and constitution of your Transition University group, you may want to spend more or less time on this section. But a university exists for the purpose of scholarship - learning and research - which is supported physically by practical Estates/Facilities Management operations and supported financially by student fees, state grants, research income and to some extent commercial spinoff ideas. This can offer challenges, but also opportunities, particularly if you can define how Transition can support academic work being carried out in a way that is mutually beneficial.
This can be an interesting and special aspect of a Transition University project. You have many people all willing and expecting to learn and many young people at a time of life when they are establishing new ways of thinking and behaving. Including sustainability aspects in this learning process in and out of the classroom can be exciting. At a university, students are learning how to critically analyse ideas and the written word, creating an opportunity for vibrant debate about how they want the world to be in the future and how to get there. Students are developing research skills, offering the chance to do research on sustainability aspects or to critically review new research emerging. However, there are many practices in higher education that can be regarded as highly unsustainable, such as the commodification of education, the focus on employment to the neglect of personal fulfilment, the audit culture around targets and league tables to increase student satisfaction scores, the treatment of students as customers and academics as call centres, etc.
A Transition University can offer opportunities for staff and students to think about as well as do sustainability action. This can create a more holistic approach to sustainability, and also transcend the distinction between what students and academics “ought” to do in a university, and what they choose to engage with in their free time.
Practical ways of enhancing scholarship in this area include:
• Hosting talks or lectures by internal academics or external speakers
• Hosting a film festival and generating discussion and debate around the issues
• Hosting a mini-conference or workshop with other projects or institutions
• Ensuring that sustainability action gets into the curriculum in some way. For example, at the University of St Andrews Transition representatives talk about the initiative within lectures on institutional strategies for sustainable development; a third year class goes to visit the new ecobuild science building, looking at the techy boiler room behind the scenes; a masters class goes on a walking transect around some of the community gardens to learn about sustainable food systems in practice; first year students are encouraged to do a free carbon conversation course to support a carbon /behaviour assignment.
• Encouraging academics to do research on the Transition project itself
• Encouraging students to do dissertations on aspects of Transition
• Enabling students to present at student, practical or even academic conferences on aspects of Transition
Liaising with other research projects as long as they feed back into the intellectual discussion of what is happening within your own institution.
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