MIC has been nominated for the prestigious ‘Education Provider of the Year’ award at Ireland’s Climate Change Leadership Awards (ICCLA) 2024.
Honouring businesses, organisations, individuals, and initiatives, The Climate Change Leadership Awards recognise those making positive change by demonstrating outstanding commitment and innovation to helping address the challenges of climate change. This nomination highlights MIC’s continued commitment to addressing the climate crisis as an educator.
John Morrissey, from the Department of Geography at MIC said: “It is wonderful to see the dedicated groundwork being put in by committed colleagues at MIC being recognised by this nomination. At both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, our students have the opportunity to critically engage with field-leading scholarship in climate change and sustainability. The nomination reflects not only the long-established reputation for teaching excellence at MIC, but our commitment to equip students with the state-of-the-art knowledge and skills needed to face our biggest societal challenges.”
In its submission, MIC detailed its efforts in foraging pro-environment perspectives and guiding sustainable actions at both the individual and societal scales, whilst also highlighting teaching and learning initiatives embedded with climate content at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. MIC’s undergraduate BA and B Ed programmes both contain climate-related content, which is integrated into the curriculum through modules such as Teaching Climate Change in Post-Primary Schools, Political Ecology and Global Environmental Change. MIC also boasts a suite of highly inventive postgraduate programmes, including M Ed Education for Sustainability and Global Citizenship, MA Climate Justice and Sustainability and MA/MSc Environment, Society and Culture, fostering sustainability leaders of the future through cutting-edge research-led teaching.
On campus, sustainability is at the centre of the recently formed Sustainability Committee, outlining how “Sustainability will feature as a central pillar in the forthcoming Mary Immaculate College’s Academic Plan… sustainability will be a guiding framework in terms of energy, heritage, green areas” in a submission to the HEA on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) (2021). The application also featured efforts from MIC’s Climate Action Roadmap 2030, which was developed in response to the request made of all publicly funded organisations and institutions through the Public Sector Mandate “to show leadership in climate action”.
The ICCLA winners will be announced at a black-tie gala dinner on 7 November at the Royal Marine Hotel, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.
