Research Sustainability in Education Award - Dr Cormac MacMahon
TU Dublin celebrated excellence in Research and Innovation at the inaugural awards ceremony held last November, 2023 recognising the incredible impact of the university’s research and innovation community.
Winner of the 'Research Sustainability in Education Award' - is Dr. Cormac MacMahon; Head of Discipline of Finance in the School of Accounting, Economics and Finance at TU Dublin.
Discussing his award win, Cormac showcased highlights of the significant impact in Research and Innovation in TU Dublin.
Our research was focused on using computational techniques based on natural language processing (NLP) to map university curriculum to the UN sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) an to evaluate the embeddedness of sustainability within module. The idea was to develop an automate tool that could assist universities in enhancing their curriculum for sustainability. Although the idea of using NLP and artificial intelligence techniques for identifying sustainability in texts is now new, their application to abbreviated documents, such a module descriptor is particularly challenging. In combining these techniques with one of the de facto sustainability reporting systems for universities, AASHE-STARS, we were able to provide a simple, but effective tool, for programme teams considering the sustainability integration in their modules.
The R&I work was very much a team effort. Much of the background IP came form Dr. Philippe Lemarchand, who is now Head of Sustainability Intelligence at TU Dublin. A considerable portion of the testing and validation was undertaken by Dr. Mick McKeever. Dr. Philip Owende provided strategic leadership for the project, sourcing the bulk of the funding the supported our work. The work can was, to a large extent, in the domain of engaged research. A significant portion of my work was focused on engaging potential stakeholders in the possible application of the techniques. These included sustainability officers, academic quality assurance officers, programme chairs, strategy officers, individual module owners. Various programme chairs become pioneers is using the tool to enhance their programmes including, Jospeh Little, Dr. Julie Dunne, Fintan Moran and Dr, Catherine Gorman.
It is widely recognised that SDG4—Quality Education, can make an important contribution to achieving all the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, SDG 4.7 requires that, by 2030, all learners should acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development (ESD). As universities seek to articulate their contributions to the SDGs, the development of the tool contributes to the practical enhancement of curriculum for sustainability. TU Dubin’s strategic plan, which requires all progammes to include sustainability as a learning outcome.
The tool is now offered as part of an integrated sustainability toolkit for educators, supported by the VP for Sustainability Office, as TU Dublin seeks to accelerate progress towards its strategic KPI of ensuring all its education programmes include a sustainability as a learning outcome. Moreover, the tool is also used in supporting workshops aimed at assisting academic staff at exploring the relevance of SDGs to their modules and programmes and at optimizing the narrative within their module descriptors to best reflect those SDGs. The VP for Sustainability office continues work on enhancing the predictive accuracy and data visualisation aspects of the tool.
As sustainability becomes pervasive in all organisations, not just universities, sustainability reporting and disclosure is rapidly becoming a mainstream business practice. we are currently exploring the potential application of the underpinning NLP techniques to corporate sustainability reporting and their mapping to various sustainability contributions as well as greenwashing detection and avoidance.
The innovative application developed by the Nominated Team, under the auspices of HEA Funded Transform-EDU project, ca. €1.4 million (2019-2022) considered that effective education in sustainable development and sustainability science are, themselves, inherently transformative; as formal education/training is critical to enhancing awareness of global challenges to sustainability, the relevant individual and societal or communal responsibilities need to be in place to address them.
Key Highlights
- The development of the tool was published in Frontiers in Sustainability (Lemarchand et al, 2022) and its application has been published in the Irish Journal of Academic Practice (Dunne et al, 2024)).
- The tool was piloted by over 20 programme teams, assisting with the interrogation of sustainability footprints in a more systematic manner and with the planning ahead for structured curricular enhancement for impact.
- The tool has also been used in the development of new academic programmes, such as the BSc in Sustainable Timber Technology, and revalidation of MSc in Sustainable Food Safety Management.
The awards will re-open for nomination in May 2024. If you would like to learn more about the TU Dublin Research and Innovation Awards or view the ceremony, please click here.