The Climate Change Education Project aims to reform Cambridge University’s curriculum to integrate degree-specific climate change content. Student working groups will collaborate with seven faculties to provide climate change curriculum recommendations across seven undergraduate courses.
Following on from the Climate Education Campaign, which gained almost 400 signatures from students and staff, we have devised a new strategy under the Students as Partners framework where student working groups will collaborate with faculties to effectively integrate climate change into Cambridge curriculum. This project has support from Pro-Vice Chancellor of Education Bhaskar Vira and the project is structured in a similar way to how previous decolonisation curriculum reforms occurred in the university.
Within this project student working groups will review undergraduate degrees, research, and provide recommendations to faculties to best integrate degree-relevant climate change curriculums. These reports will be presented to faculties at the end of Lent term and at the Cambridge Sustainability Awards with the aim that all seven faculties will pledge to prioritise and implement integrated climate change education in the future.
These seven faculties (Law, Clinical Medicine, Education, Engineering, Chemical Engineering, English and Bio Natsci) were selected based on their vocational nature where students studying these subjects will most likely pursue a career in their subject-related field (e.g. doctor, journalist, educator, engineer, lawyer, and researcher).
CCS believes that all degrees and faculties need to focus on integrating climate change curriculums at Cambridge. However, due to resource constraints, CCS aims to prioritise seven faculties that will have the largest impact in the shortest amount of time as students with these degrees are mostly likely to graduate and go into a degree-related vocation. In the future, CCS aims to branch out to other faculties in the university.
To ensure that our climate change education reports are of the highest quality, CCS have set up student working groups to ensure that curriculum recommendations are relevant, realistic, and effective.
Student working groups have been set up for each faculty. They range between 3-5 people who are either undergraduate students across all years of the degree, or master's and PhD students whose degrees are related to the seven faculties above. Working groups will assess, review and work with faculties over the Michaelmas and Lent terms to provide comprehensive curriculum recommendation reports.
September-October 2023
Reaching out to these seven faculties between September and October to present the project and arrange collaboration throughout term time.
Recruiting Student Working Groups
Michaelmas Term 2023
Initial researching and drafting phase of curriculum reports
First report draft meeting arranged with faculties
Lent Term 2024
Finalising research and reports to be submitted and handed to faculties by the end of Lent term
Present final reports to faculties
Easter Term 2024
Present projects and reports at the Sustainability Awards Ceremony
If you have any questions reach out to cambridge.climate.society@gmail.com or mm2585@cam.ac.uk
