ABSTRACT
This chapter adds to existing discussion of whole institutional change for sustainability (for example, by Bartlett and Chase, 2004; Corcoran and Wals, 2004; Hopkinson, 2010; Jones et al., 2010) by examining the University of Bradford's Ecoversity initiative. This began in 2005 with the objective of achieving significant progress towards sustainability in all aspects of the university's life simultaneously, including the estate, the curriculum, and the staff and student experience of campus life. The initial four sections below describe four stages: Genesis (2000–05), Making Connections (the first two years of the initiative, in 2005–07 when it was estates-focused), Transformation (the core period of 2007–10, when the university received funding for a national flagship project to make the entire student experience more sustainable so that Ecoversity's centre of gravity shifted towards academic and student matters), and lastly, Consolidation (the post-2010 response to diminished funding and new institutional challenges). A final section relates the initiative's experience, achievements and failures in relation to key questions within the education for sustainable development (ESD) literature, such as whether ESD is a coherent, intellectually robust body of knowledge or a moralising crusade which does not belong in higher education (Knight, 2005) and/or a high-level concept that masks significant differences between curriculum areas and is therefore difficult to implement consistently (Hopkinson and James, 2010); whether ESD must be transformational to be successful (Orr, 1994, Sterling and Gray-Donald, 2007); whether top-down or bottom-up approaches are more likely to be successful in ESD implementation (Wade, 2008); and what the relationship is between ESD-related curriculum change and other aspects of university life (M'Gonigle et al., 2006). Firstly though, the following section discusses the theoretical background to Ecoversity's activities.
