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Student Empowerment and Sustainability

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Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education
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Synonyms

Student-led action; Student-led social change

Definition

Student empowerment in the context of sustainability in higher education can be understood as the act of engaging and supporting students to gain the knowledge, skills, resiliency, and desire to enact change for sustainability.

Introduction

Increasingly, higher education institutions (HEIs) are incorporating sustainability into their policies to encourage sustainable behaviors in their campus members (Beveridge et al. 2015). Research suggests that achieving sustainability in higher education (SHE) requires all campus members (administrators, staff, faculty, and students) to learn, adapt, and innovate (Huckle and Wals 2015). HEIs are particularly well situated to encourage this as they have the ability to equip graduates, and our future leaders, with the awareness, skills, and technologies required to foster sustainable behaviors and communities (Lozano et al. 2015). Shriberg and Harris (2012) assert that the active...

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Correspondence to Jaylene Murray .

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Murray, J. (2019). Student Empowerment and Sustainability. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainability in Higher Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11352-0_365

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