Meet the students supporting the Sustainability team at City

By the Student Sustainability Office

The Sustainability team at City is responsible for informing and spearheading the university’s sustainability initiatives spanning from recycling and sustainable usage of resources on campus to implementing sustainability into academic curriculum and advising on divestment from unethical corporations. This, however, is not about them – it’s about the team they set up with a bit of help in the form of internal funding from City – the Student Sustainability Office. Without further ado, meet the team:

Hi, I am Andrei, a third year Finance student at Bayes Business School, originally from Bucharest, Romania. I lead on the communications strategy for the Student Sustainability Office. You might have already seen some of my work if you follow us on Instagram, or if you read Campus News and the Student Hub since I also work for the Student Centre. This time however, I enjoy working alongside my colleagues to conduct research, organise engagement initiatives and produce content to spearhead sustainability on campus.

Hey, I am Faith, a first year Law student from Nigeria and Ireland. I would love to work in the sector of the legal industry where social justice, equality and the law meet. As a Student Sustainability Officer, I have loved learning about how different aspects of sustainability tie into our everyday lives and careers and I believe that this information should be available to everyone. Luckilyyyy, this is something that the Student Sustainability Office and I are working to achieve!!!

Hello! I am Alba Pou and I have just graduated from a Journalism degree at City. I am from Barcelona, Spain and am also enrolled in an Anthropology and Human Evolution degree at UOC. I like to work towards sustainable development and am very happy with my role as a Student Sustainability Officer!

Hi everyone, I am Megan, a postgraduate student studying MSc Clinical, Social and Cognitive Neuroscience. For my bachelors I read Psychology at Sheffield, where the proximity to the Peak District was a great delight (if you haven’t been up north, I cannot recommend the Peaks enough for a nature getaway). Sustainability has always been a passion of mine, so I am overjoyed to be working alongside such a great team in this role.

Hey, I am Rakshanda, studying MSc. Human-Computer Interaction Design at City and my bachelor’s was in Computer Science. I enjoy doing research on user interactions and interactive technology. I aspire to work as a user experience designer and incorporate sustainability into my work. It has been a pleasure working as part of the Student Sustainability Office.

The Student Sustainability Office is an integral part of the university’s commitment to embedding sustainability across everything we do at City, and we are actively working to reduce our environmental impact and play our part in responding to the global climate challenge.

This comes as a recent study by SOS-UK has shown that 90% of students are concerned or very concerned about climate change, and we want to understand what City students think. With futures increasingly affected by climate change, it is crucial that students finally get to have a say in what their prospects look like and help shape new initiatives and activities at City.

So, what do we actually do?

Well, so far, we have organised a number of focus groups to talk to students about sustainability on campus and learn more about what students think regarding the university’s current sustainability strategy and what you believe it should be. Additionally, we have run a several weeks long survey campaign to collect more data on what you want to see on campus so we can deliver on it. In both cases, we offered several £20 vouchers, and have even more in the makings for you.

Recently, we launched a photo competition on Instagram, and we look forward to your entries. If you are passionate about photography and sustainability, then this competition is for you. Channel what sustainability means to you on campus and capture it in a picture. You could win a month Pret Coffee Subscription or one of two Sustainable gift hampers. Check out more about the competition here.

We have also been running an Instagram information campaign where we are highlighting what the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are and what they focus on as well as what we can do at City to help further align our efforts with those of the United Nations to become a more sustainable society. In fact, City has ranked very well in the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings 2022, and we want to contribute to furthering these efforts on campus on a more granular level by increasing engagement with the student community.

Did you know that we run weekly beekeeping and gardening sessions open to everyone to join? Now you know! All the details are on our Instagram page, and we also post snippets and highlights from these sessions to keep everyone informed of what’s going on. In case you missed it, we also had a stand on the hallway in university building on Wednesday 1^st June to interact with students and give away some of the honey collected from the hardworking bees nested on top of Drysdale Building. Are you BUZZing to see what else we are up to? (See what I did there?) If so, give us a follow on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter for all the latest information and updates. We are happy to hear from all of you with any suggestions and ideas, soooo get in touch!!!