ESAY-YIMs team win a national CATE award
Posted on 8 August 2024
Environmental Sustainability at York - York Interdisciplinary Modules (ESAY-YIMs) team has been awarded a national Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) from Advance HE, an organisation which works at an international level to improve higher education. The award has been made in recognition of the team’s value-based approach to collaborative, interdisciplinary programme design, teaching and learning.
Interdisciplinary teaching and learning to save the planet!
The work of the ESAY-YIMs team typifies the university’s drive to address environmental sustainability through meaningful collaboration. As Claire Hughes (Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning - Sciences and ESAY-YIMs Team Leader) states:
“It is now vitally important that graduates from all disciplines are equipped with the skills, knowledge and competencies needed to solve sustainability challenges. The ESAY-YIMs team has worked together to develop the interdepartmental structures needed to create powerful opportunities for our students to learn about and work on sustainability issues. We are delighted to receive this award which recognises the great work of the immediate ESAY-YIMs team alongside many other colleagues from across the institution who are involved in YIMs delivery. This would not have been possible without their highly effective collaboration across disciplines, support teams and external partners. We hope the ESAY-YIMs provide a blueprint for more truly interdisciplinary learning opportunities at York and beyond.”
PVC for Teaching, Learning and Students, Tracy Lightfoot is also happy that the team has been successful.
“We are thrilled that the work of the ESAY-YIMs team has been recognised with this award as their project has been both more creative and more inspiring than we ever envisaged. In terms of creativity, their work means that we are developing sustainability leaders for the future, through research-informed teaching linked to opportunities for students to work on ‘live’ environmental sustainability challenges. However, more valuable is how the team has become a powerful catalyst for others looking to break free from traditional boundaries and develop the learning and teaching experiences of the future.”
Collaboration Hat Trick
To further the celebrations, this latest CATE award completes a hat-trick for York as a team from the university has won a CATE award each year for the last three years. In 2022, the E-accessibility Working Group won the award; in 2023, the Inclusive Education team were successful and now, in 2024, the ESAY-YIMs team are proud recipients. From the university’s perspective - as University of York Vice-Chancellor Professor, Charlie Jeffery says: “Such repeated national recognition is a testament to the dedication, innovation and collective spirit of our community and something of which we can be justifiably proud.”
The ESAY-YIMs team will be invited to attend a celebratory event in Autumn 2024, where their Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence will be awarded.
For further information about the CATE Award and scheduled staff events which support collaborative working related to teaching and learning, please contact cecilia.lowe@york.ac.uk