Education for Sustainable Development

As part of IBEC’s flagship course on environmental training, Gavin Harte gave a lecture to participants in the "Foundation Course in Environmental Management. Gavin held the attention of the class for over three hours with a comprehensive overview of sustainable development, ecological footprint, climate change, energy and sustainable production and consumption.

Conor Gouldsbury
Policy Executive,
IBEC

On behalf of the students of the Department of Civil and Construction Engineering at Waterford Institute of Technology I would like to thank you most sincerely for taking the time to give a thought provoking and captivating lecture here today.

Your presentation held the attention of at least 90 under graduates for 2 hours. The fact that we had to almost push them out of the lecture theatre at the end certainly conveys to John Carney and myself that the knowledge you imparted had connected and affected our students. We believe that your presentation is an excellent model for delivery to third level students and the fact that you can customise it to suit the needs of individual faculties makes it particularly timely.

Once again thank for sharing your knowledge, enthusiasm, and initiative with us today. We look forward to meeting you again next year.

During three days Gavin made a total of six presentations to different classes and groups covering issues of sustainability, development, climate change and the carbon footprint. At his first engagement to a reading group of lecturers his PowerPoint presentaion was so captivating that we were able to arrange three extra class visits over the duration of his visit. The following day he spoke in the University Concert Hall to Dr Caoilfhionn Ni Bheachain's Communication class of alomost 400 students. I attended and was struck by the response from the students, many of whom were clearly unaware of how critical the climate change challenge is for us all. In the afternoon he gave a public lecture, which stimulated an excellent questions and answers debate from a more informed audience.

It was not merely the seeemless delivery of Gavin's presentation style which so impressed his audiences but also the quality of his slides, which included film clips, animated graphs and images. A good indication of the impression he made on teachers and learners is our intention to ask him back next semester to speak to more groups across the campus and explore other ways of imparting the message of climate change.

Gavin Harte’s lecture on Sustainable Production and Consumption to my final year engineering class was one of the highlights of the semester. His high-impact presentation used climate change and peak oil as indicators of unsustainable development and opened up an engaging dialogue with the class on how engineering can become an integral part of a sustainable future. Gavin is probably Ireland’s pre-eminent speaker on issues of sustainable development.

I asked Gavin Harte to give a guest lecture to my first-year Communications class, subsequent to attending an impressive seminar presentation that he delivered to interested faculty on the UL campus.

My Communications class has 400 students and is a core module for all Batchelor of Business Students. Gavin gave a talk on ‘Communicating Sustainability’. This worked particularly well as students were working on an assessment that asked them to develop a Communications strategy for a Sustainable Development topic. Gavin’s presentation was engaging, challenging and relevant. His lecturing style and, in particular, his audio-visual presentations were excellent. Students gave very positive feedback on the session. Without hesitation, I would invite Gavin back next autumn to address next year’s cohort.

Dr. Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin
Communications
Department of Management and Marketing
Kemmy Business School
University of Limerick