Surveying our UEL community
The Sustainability Team is always trying to make the UEL
community feel included in what’s going on around campus. Undergraduate
students, master’s students, PhD students, academic staff, support staff and
contractors are all valuable members of the university community and have their
own unique perspectives when it comes to campus life at UEL.
In the summer of 2017, the Sustainability Team conducted a
series of stalls on each UEL campus in order to survey UEL personnel on what
they thought about sustainability on campus. The aim of holding these stalls
was to help with the development of the UEL Sustainability Strategy by
gathering thoughts from the entire cross-section of people at UEL. We surveyed
482 members of the UEL community over the summer, asking them questions like
which areas they thought UEL should focus on to show its commitment to the
planet and its people, and how sustainability could connect students, staff and
the community.
Given the question of which areas UEL should focus on to
show its commitment to the planet and its people, both students and staff had
the same top three answers of energy saving, education and engagement and waste
generation and recycling. Both groups also reacted positively to the
possibility of incorporating sustainability into practical projects on campus
that could serve as work placements or dissertations.
The Sustainability Team had a great time interacting with so
many different people across all UEL campuses, and received lots of interesting
and innovative ideas for the vision of a sustainable UEL.