Green Gown Awards 2019 - James Turner, University of the West of England - Finalist

Signposting Employer Sustainability to Students. The project engaged me to develop an approach to allow for the students of The University of the West of England to investigate the sustainability credentials of prospective employers. It was enacted following the results of the NUS student surveys that found a growing desire for students to work for more sustainable employers.   

This project developed a set of resources that were adopted by the University of the West of England. These provided a categorisation, background, overview of sustainability credentials, as well as advice on searchability and reliability. These credentials were categorised into qualitative and quantitative credentials and include items such as awards, ratings, rankings, indices and sustainability reports.  

The resources provide the basic knowledge that empower students to be able to investigate sustainability credentials themselves and provide judgement on the information that they discover.  

Top 3 learnings:

• I found that the outcome of a project can drastically deviate from the original vision. 
• Relationship building within the wider team drastically improved the outcome of the project. 
• Managing the expectations of those involved with a project is hugely important.