The Profile
Beyond the syllabus
The University of Exeter’s Vice-President and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education and Student Experience) Professor Tim Quine on curriculum, community and Future17.
By Anton John Crace
"... And when people get into the detail of SDGs, they realise that there's something for pretty much everybody."
"We passed 1000 Future17 alumni over a year ago now. I think there's a lot to be really excited about."
The Future17 programme matches students with SDG-focused projects submitted by global companies, international organisations, start-ups and NGOs. Co-founded by QS and Exeter University in the UK, the programme owes a lot to Exeter's Green Consultant internships programme, which itself was borne out of the institution's desire to fulfil its Fairer, Greener, Healthier strategy.
Future17 co-architect, Professor Tim Quine, sits down to tell QS Insights more about the programme and the work his institution is doing.
QS: I wanted to start off by talking a little bit about how Exeter is embedding the SDGs within its curriculum and also extracurricular activities.
Professor Tim Quine: A passion for creating a more sustainable, a more affluent, a more healthy world lies at the heart of our Strategy 2030, in which we say we're going to use the power of education research to achieve those SDGs. And that strategy was developed through a pan-University conversation, so it reflects the DNA of the institution. So, it was pretty natural in 2019 that we signed up for the Sustainable Development Goals Accord, which commits us to working across the spectrum of university activity – research, education and the wider operations of the university – to embed sustainability in everything we do.
In 2019, some of our leading scientists produced a white paper, calling on the university to declare a climate and environment emergency. As a result of that paper and discussion of it at board level, we did indeed declare a climate environment emergency in 2019 and the response to that declaration is led by an executive board subcommittee chaired by two of our Senior Vice Presidents.
[In terms of] embedding sustainability into the curriculum, there's a couple of innovations that we've featured at Reimagine Education. For example, “Grand Challenges” that's been going for more than 10 years. That was a brainchild of one of our leading climate scientists, Peter Cox, who really wanted to look at the way that we could bring students into those interdisciplinary conversations at the fringes of their curriculum, to explore the grand challenges, but in the local context.
We've developed an education thematic forum based around the climate environment emergency. That has education-focused climate scientists leading, working alongside our students – some in engagement, some in paid internships – looking at the status of Sustainability Education at the University and looking for recommendations for change. A couple of outcomes have emerged from that. We've agreed to a policy statement that commits to embedding SDGs and climate emergency across all of our degree programmes. And we've started work on a curriculum mapping project.
QS: Many education leaders have observed that, at times, their institution needs to be pushed in a direction that it didn't necessarily see it needed to go, and students and faculty have been the drivers of those pushes. What has engagement been like at Exeter?
TQ: Not everybody is passionate about sustainability. But I guess one of the things I've been really astonished by is how unifying the Fairer, Greener, Healthier themes within the university strategy are. And when people get into the detail of SDGs, they realise that there's something for pretty much everybody.
Each year I have what are called Teaching Excellence meetings with all our departments, a sort of quality assurance process in terms of the quality of education. Each year the second half of the meetings are focused on a strategic theme and a couple of years ago, we asked departments to report back on how they were either making Fairer, Greener and Healthier. I was really impressed that every department had a really rich story to tell about the way that the core ideas, the core principles were being addressed.
I guess the short answer is: really good engagement. I think the push factor came initially at that institutional level, from the white paper. But we've got really active student societies working across sustainability issues and some really passionate advocates; some of our students have appeared in the sidelines of a number of news headlines.
QS: Exeter is, of course, a founding member of Future17. What have been the outcomes for the university so far?
TQ: Future17 is one of the things I'm most proud of. It sort of grew out one of those “aha!” moments when, referring back to that strategy, 2030, we wanted that to be informed by best practice across the world. I reached out to [QS founder and president] Nunzio Quacquarelli, and asked where did he think the future of education was going?
A series of really important traits came together in that conversation around 21st century communication, collaboration, intercultural skills. And I guess the new perspective that Nunzio gave me was how much there was a growing interest amongst employers in addressing their contribution to the SDGs.
We've always known the passion of students to effect change. At Exeter, we already had Green Consultants [a programme that trains students and places them in internships to help businesses with their sustainability goals]. As Nunzio and I were talking these things through, he said what about taking Green Consultants, that model, and taking it globally to develop those new insights and perspectives you get from students with very different backgrounds, working together. That's the sort of origin story of Future17.
The student engagement has been fantastic. That sort of transformation in their perspective comes from talking to people on the other side of the world who’ve got the same sort of passion and motivation, but completely different lived experiences. When they've got those sort of transformational learning opportunities under the guidance of expert mentors, then you really see some fantastic outputs. And it's been really encouraging to hear the sponsors talking very seriously about the work that students have undertaken in really quite a short period of time.
The growth of the network in scale and diversity has been spectacular. We passed 1000 Future17 alumni over a year ago now. I think there's a lot to be really excited about.
One of the things that it would be great to see is increasing geographical diversity of the network and reaching into the Global South. We appreciate everyone's looking at the challenges of running the basics in their programmes. I think the more we can build things like Future17 into our programmes, the more effective they'll be. We took the decision right at the start to do credit weighting so that, in effect, the funding for those credits can fund the sustainability of Future17. I highly recommend thinking about how you fully embed it in your programme, rather than having it as a co-curricular, because those co-curriculars are always under threat when the resources get squeezed.
QS: Let’s talk a bit more about that. How do you ensure that universities remain committed while also preventing defunding?
TQ: I think the key is to weave as much into the core curriculum as possible. We're in the midst of a curriculum transformation project that we call “Curriculum for Change”. And I guess it's called that, partly reflecting the transformational power of change of education, but also the pace of change in the world outside, and the enthusiasm of our students to see change.
In that, we’re almost taking things that were piloted outside the curriculum, and bringing them into the curriculum, which is vital for sustainability for two reasons: for the institution and for students. If it sits outside the curriculum, then the only students who can engage with it are those who don't have to be working, doing paid work to maintain their life at university.QS: How do you see education continuing to evolve in the future?
QS: How do you hope the provision of sustainability education will shape and change in the future?
TQ: I think it'll be more interdisciplinary, experiential and digitally-enabled. Many of the themes that are already there in Future17. I think one of the great powers of Future17, Green Clubs and other programmes is putting that theory into practice.
I also think we'll have to walk the walk. We've been doing quite a lot of work around reducing the cost to the planet of education by looking at our field trips. Long-haul field trips are really attractive, great experiences for students staff but the carbon cost of those is really significant. We're looking at ways we can reduce that.
And rethinking transnational education. What does that look like? Is it really about putting up your flag in another city, or is it going to be about creating networks of partnership with other institutions around the world?