LTA Connect: Embedding the Sustainable Development Goals in the Curriculum

Session Outline

Session slides | Session recording

Session Outline

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal set of goals, targets and indicators adopted by all UN member states in 2015. They set out a framework for eliminating poverty, acting on climate change, and creating a more just and sustainable future for all, whilst demonstrating the links between social, environmental, and economic challenges.

The 17 SDGs cover a broad understanding of sustainability and help to identify links to our teaching, learning and work.

UHI is currently developing a Sustainability Strategy that will include a target for embedding learning for sustainability into all courses. In carrying this out all students will be provided with the learning opportunities to develop their understanding of sustainability and equip them with the knowledge and skills needed to help them contribute to a more sustainable future.

To support this significant area of work this session will provide an opportunity to hear examples of practice from lecturers at UHI Inverness on how they are embedding the SDGs, or learning for sustainability, into their curriculum areas.

All speakers are members of the UHI Green Champions Network, and a short introduction to the initiative will also be included in this session for anyone wishing to find out more about it.

Presenter Bios

Angela Spence

Angela is the work-based assessor for business and administration apprenticeships at UHI Inverness. With nearly 20 years of experience in this field working in both the private and public sector, including five years within UHI, Angela helps candidates complete vocational qualifications using evidence generated from their workplace.

Interesting fact: Angela is also a trained journalist and has a passion for environmental issues.

Mandy Haggith

Mandy is a lecturer in literature and creative writing at UHI Inverness. She lives on a wooded coastal croft in Assynt. This is her second shot at academia – the first time around involved a PhD in artificial intelligence, after which she spent twenty years as a freelance environmental activist and writer. She is interested in blurring boundaries, such as those between the arts and sciences, those between research, creative practice and teaching and those between work and play. Her first novel won the Robin Jenkins Literary Award for environmental writing in 2009 and she has been poet in residence at the Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens and Inverewe Gardens.

Mari Todd

Mari is part of the Psychology Team at UHI Inverness. Mari’s background includes working in community settings delivering health, wellbeing and environment initiatives. In a previous role within NHS Shetland wellbeing initiatives included delivery of community mental health and suicide prevention programmes which were then rolled out to the whole of Scotland (Mental Health First Aid and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Programmes.  Other community health initiatives included walking for health initiatives and GP referral to exercise schemes. Mari has completed an MSc in Sport and Exercise Psychology where the research project explored the links between social identity, the coastal environment and health and wellbeing through the prism of coastal rowing.

More recent research includes taking a social identity approach to improving wellbeing and team functioning with NHS staff (Poster Presentation UHI Inverness 2023) and investigating the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on rural communities and sustainable behaviours. I am keen to continue to explore the link between the environment, wellbeing and sustainable behaviours and to embed consideration of sustainability into teaching.

Rosie Newman

Rosie is a lecturer in art and education at UHI Inverness. She teaches Research and Collaboration on the BA Contemporary Art program and 3D on NC art and Art & Design in Supported Education. She is a multidisciplinary, socially engaged artist/researcher with an interest in the role that art plays towards a more sustainable future, exploring phenomenological, psychological, and aesthetic connections between people and natural environments. Having recently attended the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, supported by the Visual Artists and Craft Makers Award, she took part in the Argyll Hope Spot artist's snorkelling residency, where she used steel headdresses to creatively explore the underwater marine environment of the first Hope spot in mainland UK, exhibiting at the Rockfield Centre 2023.

Aimee Harvey

Aimee is a Student Development Officer working in the UHI Student Experience Team. Her role in supporting and representing students has led to an increased focus on environment and sustainability related discussions and projects. As a result of this she set-up and coordinates the UHI Green Champions Network, which launched in September 2022.

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