Sustainability with purpose: an OU event for Students Organising for Sustainability

The Open University was invited by Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK) to deliver a Host Partnership Event in June 2025.

SOS-UK recognise that an education system is needed which equips graduates with the necessary competencies to face and address the climate and ecological emergency and deliver on climate justice. The OU was successful in being accredited with SOS-UK’s Responsible Futures in 2024, a whole institution accreditation with the aim of embedding sustainability across all aspects of students learning. The accreditation is unique in that it is audited by students.

The partnership event in June had a global reach, attended by OU staff and students, as well as external Higher Education providers and their students.

Themes that were challenging were purposely chosen:

• Brand and Marketing
• Employability and Green Skills
• Responsible AI

These proved to be really engaging and collaborative sessions using Miro, polls and breakout rooms.

In the Responsible AI session, Mike Richards, Senior Lecturer, Computing and Communications, provided some startling facts on AI. Power demand for AI has doubled from 2023 to 2024 and is increasing by 30-40% per year. A lot of companies are purchasing gas turbines just to run AI. However, this moved into some more positive conversations relating to the work of Maria Toro-Trocconis, a guest speaker from Cambridge University, who talked through the development of an AI coach to help guide using AI responsibly.

Jethro Tieman and Ciara Linehan (Open SU) were part of the Employability and Green Skills session and provided the summary below:

Jethro is the Open SU Sustainability Representative and has been interested in green skills since the start of his elected term and when he mentioned it to us as something he would like to explore at the University, we were lucky enough to have staff across the OU who were already working in this area on sustainability skills badges, in green careers in the careers service and in embedding sustainability in the curriculum more widely.

We were really happy to have been given the opportunity to speak with a range of students and staff about green skills and collect thoughts and views from such a wide range of people. We will be using the feedback in a lot of these related projects currently happening at the OU.

Key takeaways included thoughts around embedding sustainability in the curriculum in a holistic way and considering corporate responsibility but also in a gradual way; introducing it in first year and then solidifying this value later on in the student journey all the while keeping students thinking about the employability benefits that are also associated with being a green citizen as well as benefits to self, the University, future workplace and the community and environment, local and global. There are many interesting thoughts shared and we will be analysing these and sharing them with our colleagues across the University.