World Student Environmental Network Global Summit 2016
Organising teams at Keele and Sussex Universities are delighted to announce that a group of students have won a joint bid to host the 9th annual World Student Environmental Network’s (WSEN) Global Summit in 2016. The WSEN is a hub and worldwide supporter of creative student initiatives to help incorporate sustainability into Higher Education. Their flagship initiative is an annual global summit held in a different country every year with about 100 delegates coming from dozens of universities from around the world.
The summit will be roughly a week long and is expected to take place in the summer of 2016, with periods spent at both Keele and Sussex. The student-led summit will involve lectures from leading sustainability experts, hands-on workshops, and a community project. The summit is very much a student-led initiative with staff at both institutions supporting the initiative.
This year both Keele and Sussex Universities will be sending delegates to the 2015 summit in Australia to learn from their organising team. Previous hosts have included Doshisha University in Japan, University of Victoria in Canada, University of Lausanne in Switzerland, and Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
The preliminary organising committee, consisting of Laura Grossmann, Rebecca Laycock and Ulrich Pohanka comment:
We are very excited about the opportunity of organising this global gathering of students and are looking forward to the challenge of doing so in a collaborative way between two universities. We believe that showing the delegates two different parts of the UK as well as two different institutions will enrich their experience immensely.
Professor Mark Ormerod, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Environment and Sustainability) at Keele University, comments:
This is a tremendous achievement and it is fantastic to see students taking such a strong lead in sustainability, one of the university’s key overarching priorities and strategic aims, and one of the biggest global challenges. We look forward to building a strong relationship with Sussex and the other universities that will be sending delegates from all over the world. Cooperation is the foundation of building a sustainable future, and with this summit we will genuinely be leading by example.
Professor Andrea Cornwall, Head of the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex, comments:
"Sussex students have a long and proud tradition of activism, and care deeply about not just understanding the world but making it a more just and sustainable place for us all. Coming together with the University of Keele to host WSEN 2016 is a very exciting opportunity to advance an agenda to which we at the University of Sussex are passionately committed."
Professor Clare Mackie, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) at the University of Sussex, comments:
“With staff and students from more than 100 countries around the globe and world-leading teaching and research in areas such as development studies and climate change, Sussex has internationalism and sustainability in its DNA. I am proud of the work that our students have put in to attract this world summit to Sussex and Keele, and very much look forward to welcoming students from all over the world onto our campus next summer.
There will be a meeting for interested students at Keele on May 26th, 3-4pm in CBA 1.098. A meeting at Sussex will be announced through our Facebook page. For more information about this or how to get involved, please get in touch with Rebecca Laycock at r.laycock@keele.ac.uk. A website for the 2016 summit is under construction, but in the meantime the WSEN website provides a wealth of information about the network as well as the summits: http://www.wsen.org//
