An overview of the Monash Education for Sustainability Strategic Framework
Introduction
It was Sir John Monash who counseled to:
"Adopt as your fundamental creed that you will equip yourself for life, not solely for
your own benefit but for the benefit of the whole community.”
Equipping our graduates to address the grand challenge of sustainability will do more
than deliver them a personal benefit by improving their future employment prospects.
The whole community will also benefit through the improved environmental, social and
economic outcomes that our graduates will be equipped to deliver when sustainability is
embedded in their university experience.
As noted in ‘Monash University: The next ten years’:
“Today’s world faces huge challenges around creating economic and environmental
sustainability and social and cultural equity. Institutions that aspire to greatness
will contribute substantially to overcoming those challenges, both by educating the
students who will tackle them and by developing blue sky and applied knowledge
themselves.”
Monash’s efforts to address the challenge of sustainability through its research, teaching
and campus operations has already seen it recognized as Australia’s ‘Greenest’
university. However, if Monash is to achieve its aspiration to become the best university
within the Asia Pacific, it is essential that we respond to the grand challenge of
sustainability through an even deeper commitment in all our activities.
Embedding EfS means we must go beyond delivering an understanding of the
unsustainable consequences of current practices such as the threats posed to
ecosystems by overuse and depletion of resources, as well as the devastating effects of
poverty and inequity which exist in communities round the world. The challenge is to
equip, motivate and empower our graduates to bring about change by considering the
full environmental, social and economic implications of the decisions they will make as
individuals, professionals and members of the community. The priority must be on
sustainable development, considering not only the environmental dimension but also
the economic and social ones to bring about “development that meets the needs of the
present while safeguarding Earth’s life-support system, on which the welfare of current
and future generations depends”1
The Education for Sustainability (EfS) strategy, endorsed by the Education Executive
Group, formalises Monash’s commitment to embedding sustainability in our education
programs and identifies how we will move forward. This document outlines the EfS
strategic framework.
Griggs et al (2013) Sustainable development goals for people and planet. Nature. 495,
305-307
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Overview
Figure 1 provides a visual representation of the EfS strategic framework. Through a
process of education renewal, sustainability will be embedded in all Monash education
programs. The aim of this strategy is to equip all graduates with relevant discipline
specific understanding and capacities, along with the capacity to work across discipline
boundaries, to address the challenge of sustainability.
The EfS strategy will be implemented in conjunction with the Office of the Pro-Vice
Chancellor for Learning and Teaching. An Advisory group is to be formed to assist in
guiding the development and implementation of the EfS strategy. Advancing EfS through
education renewal will require resourcing and due consideration to governance along
with measuring and reporting progress. Details of those components are still being
developed.
Figure 1: EfS strategic framework
While envisioning where we want to be is important, so too is appreciating were we are
now. Monash unquestionably has lots of EfS achievements to celebrate:

Monash Campuses are increasingly modelling sustainable practices through
greater commitments to sustainable energy and water management, waste
minimization along with ethical and sustainable sourcing.

Students from a range of faculties are already engaged in a variety of
organsiations and initiatives such as the Oxfam Partnership, Engineers without
Borders, the Social Justice pillar in Law and the International Health Group and
Rural Health Club which are helping to deliver improved environmental, social
and economic outcomes for communities both in Australia and abroad.

Monash offers a range of formal Education programs and initiatives in the
sustainability space including:
– Bachelors of Environmental Science/Engineering, a Sustainability Major in
Bachelor of Commerce & Bachelor of Arts
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Inclusion of sustainability focussed units in all programs offered through the
Education Faculty (effective 2014)
Strong sustainability units within degree programs (e.g. the MBA) and the
Depth Unit (MON2222) on ‘Sustainability: Learning and Living it’
The Master of Sustainability (offered through the Arts Faculty)
Development of a web portal to support embedding sustainability in the first
year engineering program,
Inclusion of an EfS module in the Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice.
Offering an academic staff professional development program on embedding
sustainability through unit renewal,
Inclusion of guest lectures from the Monash Sustainability Institute into
many academic programs
Green Steps, the award winning extracurricular program that delivers
practical sustainability skills and experience to students, is now offered
throughout Australia and overseas.
Those achievement already demonstrate Monash’s leadership in EfS. Many of those
achievements are the result of the hard work of individual professional and academic
staff who made the most of opportunities they had to advance an issue they saw as being
of long term importance. Their pioneering efforts are validated through the
development of this EfS strategy for the university. While we have much to celebrate,
when considered against the scale and diversity of the education programs offered at
Monash, it is clear that activity related to EfS remains limited, siloed and patchy. The EfS
strategy aims to build off our achievements to date by articulating an approach to
embedding sustainability across all education programs at Monash.
Key Components of the EfS strategy
Drawing on insight from the literature, and the experience gained from initial
exploratory projects undertaken at Monash, EfS will be advanced through a combination
of Strategic and Tactical education renewal.

Strategic education renewal focuses on whole course and year levels. From a
strategic perspective there is scope to consider new education programs with a
sustainability focus in addition to renewing existing offerings. When renewing
existing offerings, there is an opportunity to learn from an initiative which
developed an approach to embed sustainability in the first year engineering
program. In that initiative, a series of workshops involving internal and external
stakeholders identified relevant learning outcomes relating to sustainability. A
blended learning (Moodle) site was then established to provide on-line lectures,
activities and discussion forums for students. The process only engaged academic
staff and enabled them to incorporate aspects of sustainability into lectures and
assignments without re-writing their unit. It was also found to produced a
statistically significant increase in student’s self reported knowledge of
sustainability. As part of the on-going EfS strategy, there is scope to take the
Engineering initiative beyond first year and to consider how a similar
collaborative approach to education renewal could be applied in other
disciplines/courses.
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Tactical education renewal will complement the strategic initiatives described
above by focusing on individual units. The aim of the tactical level initiative is to
engage with the unit coordinators to equip, support and empower then to embed
sustainability in the units they teach through a process of evolutionary education
renewal. The approach builds off the successful academic staff professional
development programs undertaken at a number of North American Universities.
It emphases making changes to units, over time, to embed sustainability rather
than needing to undertake a major overhaul of a unit over a short period of time.
To support tactical education renewal, a professional development program for
Monash academic staff has been developed to assist them to embed sustainability
in units they teach. The program involves a blended series of on-line modules and
face-to-face workshops. As part of the roll out of the EfS strategy that
professional development program will be made available to staff from
throughout Monash.
In Conclusion
Addressing the Grand Challenge of Sustainability provides an ideal opportunity for
Universities to lead the way and deliver graduates with attributes which will not only
enhance their long term career prospects but also benefit the community. However, it
cannot be left to chance. A proactive approach is needed if we are to bring about change
and that requires a commitment to an explicit strategy.
The road to embedding sustainability in University education is a long and challenging
one. But every long journey must begin with first steps and an understanding of where
you are headed. Through progressing our EfS Strategy we believe we have begun an
important journey, one that will deliver stronger outcomes for Monash graduates and
the whole community.
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