How can we help educators and students understand why sustainability matters? And How can we engage people from varied disciplines in discussions around sustainability?
To help answer these questions, we caught up with Dr. Sayed Elhoushy from the School of Business and Management, and student co-creators Bhuvana Chilukuri and Sanaah Khurana, who are all involved in a new and exciting interdisciplinary sustainability project at Queen Mary.
Together, they’re helping lead the development of a short course called "Foundations in Sustainability", which grew out of the Sustainability in the Curriculum Network, a group with over 50 members from across the university. As Sayed explained:
“All of us come together in different meetings, workshops to discuss just one aim, one question. How can we embed sustainability in the curriculum, allowing our educators, students and community to better understand why sustainability is important?”
Following the success of a funding bid to the President and Principal’s Fund, a team was formed to turn this collective ambition into action by designing a short course that seeks to make sustainability engaging and accessible to both Queen Mary and our local communities.
Creating a curriculum that matters
As Bhuvana put it, the team has an ambitious set of goals:
“We want to develop a course that could be helpful to our students, our community, and our educators.”
For educators, the course is designed to support their understanding of how to teach sustainability in a meaningful and adaptable way. As Sayed highlighted, they wanted to help people discover “What sustainability means across disciplines and give them some case studies, some activities, some approaches that they can use to embed sustainability in their program.”
For students, the team wants to address not just the "what" or "how"—but the why. As Sayed explained, it’s crucial that students grasp the broader purpose behind sustainability in education. They need to know “why we are investing in it, why are we recruiting co-creators, why are we asking educators to include it.”
This message is especially important given global concerns about the ‘green skills gap’ and the need for sustainability competencies in many career paths. The course also aims to make learning fun and engaging, avoiding the sense of hopelessness that can often accompany discussions about sustainability. As Bhuvana noted:
“It does often get boring to have a course about sustainability if all it’s teaching about is, oh, the water’s degrading, plants degrading… So we do get to have a lot of creative conversations... debates on ‘what if this debate could be taught’, maybe we could have a debate about that in the course.”
For the community, the team wants to both highlight the impactful sustainability work Queen Mary is doing, much of which benefits the local community, and make the course accessible beyond academia. As Sanaah noted:
“A large chunk of the project is facilitated by Queen Mary but one of our stakeholders is the community around East London. So there is that layer of ensuring that someone who may not have necessarily formally been educated on the concept of sustainability still has that interaction.”
Ultimately, all of these threads—education, student engagement, community outreach—feed into a larger vision: the creation of a Queen Mary Virtual Green Space for Sustainability, a digital hub designed to showcase ongoing work, connect different disciplines, and foster meaningful collaborations between students, staff, and local partners.
The project also aims to establish baseline knowledge and tools to help participants understand the language and vocabulary of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). This understanding is crucial for describing and addressing society's major challenges. The short course will focus on developing four interdisciplinary themes aligned with Queen Mary's Strategy 2030. These themes will be prioritised to address global sustainability goals outlined in the strategy, ensuring efforts align with the university’s overall mission for excellence in world-class education, student support, and student employability.
Collaboration in action: the power of co-creation
At the heart of this project is co-creation—bringing together students, educators, and external partners to shape something collectively. This interdisciplinary approach has allowed the team to tackle sustainability as the complex, context-dependent challenge that it is.
One thing that really stood out for the students was how they were able to explore the nuance of sustainability during this process and how different interdisciplinary perspectives highlighted different challenges. These conversations not only helped develop a richer understanding of sustainability but were a positive experience in its own right, as Sanaah explained:
“in one meeting there was almost an intense debate going on about whether a certain aspect was sustainable or not. People gave examples from two different contexts—one where it was considered sustainable, and one where it wasn’t. So the whole idea of seeing that play out in real-life examples, and realising how complex sustainability is when you're trying to integrate it across different disciplines—that was very unexpected, and very, very fun to be part of”
Co-creation has also been a space for mutual learning. Students like Bhuvana and Sanaah felt empowered to shape the direction of the course, but equally gained insight from working alongside experienced staff. As Bhuvana emphasised:
“It forms a really comfortable setting to, kind of, experiment with what could work, what could not work… we do have a lot of creative ideas and aspects we’re able to bring to the table.”
Of course, this level of collaboration comes with challenges, especially time. As Sayed reflected:
“It is very, very time-consuming…Co-creation has so many advantages: Creativity, innovation, it’s lovely learning from others, hearing different voices and so on but the time aspect should always be considered.”
Looking ahead
The short course is due to be launched later this year. In the meantime, you can engage with the team by visiting their Sustainability in the Curriculum page and maybe even join the Sustainability in The Curriculum Network yourself! Moreover, if you have any ideas or suggestions around sustainability, the team would love to hear from you.