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What Do We Imagine the Campuses of Tomorrow Will Be like? Universities’ Transition Toward Sustainability in the Light of the Transition Initiatives

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Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education

Part of the book series: World Sustainability Series ((WSUSE))

Abstract

Growing numbers of schools of higher education are seeking not only to improve the quality of teaching but also to reduce their own vulnerability to the environmental crisis; and in this effort they are taking advantage of any synergies they can get from the contributions of pro-sustainability citizen movements and groups. This paper looks at one such movement, the Transition Initiatives, with the aim of finding synergies that could help consolidate a kind of university campus where greening is not restricted to management, but also pervades degree, class and subject curricula. The objective of the paper is to identify the traits of the Transition Initiatives, its similarities with universities’ vision of sustainable development and the steps it proposes for generating the kind of institutional management in continuous innovation that optimises the change toward sustainability. A hermeneutic methodology is used. The sources are bibliography and documents, reports and manifestos. The main contribution is to show where the Transition Initiatives and the university share parallels in their visions of sustainability and, based on that affinity, to point out the potential interest of a bottom-up organisational model for university management in continuous innovation and the optimisation of the change toward sustainability. The results leave open a path for future work to find empirical proof of the proposal’s feasibility.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.iau-hesd.net/en/actions/2276/global-higher-education-sustainability-partnership-ghesp.html.

  2. 2.

    Forum created to replace the former Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) of the United Nations Division for Sustainable Development.

  3. 3.

    http://eric.ed.gov/?ti=Professional+Isolation.

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Acknowledgments

The research project that supports this work has been carried out with funding from the Spanish Government through the Programa de Estancias de Movilidad de Profesores e Investigadores en Centros Extranjeros de Enseñanza Superior e Investigación. Ref.: PRX15/00456.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Education and Sustainable Development, University of Distance Educación (UNED), Juan Del Rosal no. 14, 28040, Madrid, Spain

    Mª Ángeles Murga-Menoyo & María Novo

  2. Management Systems, Hull University Business School, Wharfe 119, Hull, UK

    Ángela Espinosa

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  1. Mª Ángeles Murga-Menoyo
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  2. Ángela Espinosa
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  3. María Novo
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Correspondence to Mª Ángeles Murga-Menoyo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. FTZ-ALS, HAW Hamburg , Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

  2. Department of Biology & CESAM, University of Aveiro , Aveiro, Portugal

    Ulisses M. Azeiteiro

  3. DCSG, CEF, Universidade de Coimbra and Universidade Aberta, PT, Porto, Portugal

    Fátima Alves

  4. Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom

    Petra Molthan-Hill

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Murga-Menoyo, M.Á., Espinosa, Á., Novo, M. (2017). What Do We Imagine the Campuses of Tomorrow Will Be like? Universities’ Transition Toward Sustainability in the Light of the Transition Initiatives . In: Leal Filho, W., Azeiteiro, U., Alves, F., Molthan-Hill, P. (eds) Handbook of Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development in Higher Education. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47877-7_14

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