ATU and Mayo County Council announce sustainability education and training

Atlantic Technological University (ATU) and Mayo County Council have announced a new collaboration focusing on sustainability education and training.

The announcement comes in line with a key objective of the Council’s recently launched Mayo Council Climate Action Plan 2024-2029, which aims for Mayo County Council to be a climate resilient and low carbon organisation that ‘inspires, leads and facilitates just and ambitious climate action across the county’. 

This means the Council will endeavour to embed not just climate action but all SDGs into their work. Mayo County Council have also recently been named as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Champion for 2024/24.

ATU’s draft Strategic Development Plan puts sustainability as a core guiding principle. 

The university, and the Mayo campus in particular, has a distinguished record of action and achievement in this area, being the first Institute of Technology (IOT) in Ireland to be awarded An Taisce Green Campus status (2012) and the first IOT to be awarded the Biodiversity Flag (2014).

Staff in the Department of Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences have developed key strengths in cross-disciplinary collaboration, sustainability leadership, place-based learning, experiential learning, and community development.

They were recently awarded funding from Community Foundation Ireland (CFI) to deliver a project titled ‘Consortium for Change’ which will see the roll-out of a new Postgraduate Certificate Sustainability Leadership programme, commencing September 2024. 

The new Level nine programme, which is 80 percent funded by CFI, will be delivered in a blended format with participants attending residential workshops (class-room based) in monthly blocks throughout the semester and preparing for these sessions in the intervening period with designated on-line materials on the ATU Virtual Learning platform. 

Key elements involve self-directed learning, participation and collaboration and problem-orientation delivered in an interdisciplinary way with different inputs from social, environmental, and economic perspectives.  

Dr Deirdre Garvey, Head of the ATU Department of Environmental Humanities and Social Sciences, said: “Experts have highlighted that most of the tools, technologies and change mechanisms exist today to make the transition to decarbonise the economy and prepare for climate change, but the key to change relies on leadership. 

“We hope the programme will help in considering the complexity of the sustainability challenges and how we can take action at a local level and create that capacity for change and embed a commitment to action for the longer term,” she added.

She said the availability of funded Level six and Level nine programmes aligned to the strategic vision of a sustainable resilient future, which ‘provides a great opportunity for Mayo to lead by our collective actions’.

Separately, the ATU Galway-Mayo Centre for Sustainability developed the Level six Certificate in The Sustainable Development Goals, Partnership, People, Planet and Prosperity.

Dr John Scahill, SDG programme chair, ATU, explained: “The programme offers students the opportunity to explore the SDGs in an Irish context. It aims to encourage knowledge of and reflection on how the SDG framework can be applied in a local context to encourage the implementation of environmentally sustainable, living and working practices, that support a just transition to a more equitable society.”

For further information on these two programmes, see the ATU website.