SEI York launches interdisciplinary module for undergraduates
For the academic year 2023/24, the University of York is offering new learning pathways for students.
The innovative York Interdisciplinary Modules (YIMs) offer students an exciting opportunity to work across disciplines on contemporary challenges and develop key skills and competencies. YIMs are facilitated by the Environmental Sustainability at York team (ESAY). The module offered by SEI York is one of four sustainability-related modules available to students. Students are not required to have any prior knowledge or experience in sustainability-related topics in order to participate and are welcomed from all disciplinary backgrounds.
Module coordinator Dr Eleni Michalopoulou writes:
For the first time, the SEI York team is launching a module to be offered to 3rd year undergraduates from any discipline at the university: Sustainability and Policy: Research, Engage, Change. Students will work in multidisciplinary teams to conduct a guided research project and produce a report targeted at a specific audience e.g. national/local government or NGO.
The module is being supported by a core team (Dr Rhys Archer, Sarah Foster and Kate O'Reilly), but a larger team of over 10 experts from the centre will be involved in delivering the module. This is part of the York Interdisciplinary Modules (YIMs) initiative, beginning in the academic year 2023/24.
The aim of this module is to show students how change can be achieved through the intersection of science and policy: the science-policy interface has always been the space where theory turns into action. This space is now more important than ever as time runs out for humanity to solve those critical challenges that are affecting both environmental and human health: climate change, pollution in all forms, extreme weather and biodiversity loss.
Through series of case studies, students will engage with real-world challenges and will develop the much-needed skills that will allow them to contribute to solving complex problems, like climate change or air pollution. In doing so, students will develop a variety of skills including advanced problem solving, innovation, interdisciplinary thinking, even negotiation skills! Students will explore how to affect change at local, national, and global scales and explore the varied forms and processes through which change can manifest.
These critical skills will enable students to engage with a variety of stakeholders and empower them to use their own backgrounds, whatever their discipline, to contribute solutions to the current challenges faced by humanity as a species.
Our aim is to showcase how SEI members are already achieving this: we want to draw from a variety of examples within SEI and demonstrate the world class-work – and world-class change – achieved by the efforts of SEI members.
To give students a full picture, we will be drawing on all five of our Research Areas. We will use examples of our work in these areas as case studies for our students. We want to show the students the full process of environmental policy work: everything that goes on from engaging with and producing science to having an impact on the local, national and global level.
Word edited by Dr Anjali Vyas-Brannick, Communications Assistant.