NEWS UPDATE: 8 SEPTEMBER 2023 Deadlines, dates for your diaries and details of initiatives that may interest you.
In this issue
Chapter Onboarding Webinar for new PRME Leads- 13 September
PRME I5 workshops – September and early October
Employability, Sustainability and Placements Webinar -12 September
Links to our 2022/23 Student Writing Competition Winners’ work
Call for Collaboration – PRME in Postgraduate Dissertations
Update on Chapter Secretariat
Welcome back to a new academic year – as always, September seems to be with us sooner than expected! Many of you will have been at the BAM conference recently, and we hope you were able to join the PRME i5 session there. We also hope that since our last newsletter in July you have had an opportunity for some well-deserved rest and recuperation. Below you will find details of various events and initiatives that we hope you will find useful, informative and/or inspiring as you make your way into the academic year.
Chapter Onboarding Webinar for new PRME Leads– 13 September, 11am – 12 noon
Are you a new PRME Lead within an Irish or UK PRME signatory? Would you benefit from learning more about PRME, including opportunities for faculty and student engagement? If so, please join us on Wednesday 13 September 2023 at 11am for an 'Onboarding Session for New PRME Leads'. To register, please click here.
The session will cover:
An overview of the objectives, structure, and work of PRME.
Different ways to engage with PRME at a local, national, and international level, including competitions for faculty and students.
Key aspects of the PRME Sharing Information on Progress (SIP) reporting framework.
Q & A with established PRME Leads within the Chapter.
In addition, there will be a set of sharable resources disseminated, which you can use to articulate the value of PRME to colleagues within your institution.
The Chapter offers these sessions twice a year; the next one will be in early spring 2024. For questions or more information, please email Laura Steele (laura.steele@qub.ac.uk). PRME i5 Workshops On behalf of the Chapter and the i5 Expert Pedagogy Group, our Vice Chair, Natascha Radclyffe-Thomas, has already offered a number of workshops introducing the i5 responsible leadership competencies project and materials, both at our own events and at other conferences. But we know many of you would still like to get a better foundational understanding of what the i5 project is all about. The next opportunities to do so are courtesy of PRME Global, who will be running a series of workshops in September and early October. Below is a summary of what is on offer, from a recent PRME global communication: “The PRME Secretariat is thrilled to offer a new series of community training workshops for PRME Signatory Members that aim to reimagine the way education is approached to create a lasting impact on students and society. The Impactful-Five (i5) Project seeks to provide an opportunity for creative engagement with challenging subject-matter in the classroom. With these workshops PRME will be shining a spotlight on the ground-breaking work of the Impactful-Five (i5) Project and its pedagogy, and the lessons that have been learned through pilots with the Chapter-based Expert Pedagogy Members, PRME Champions, and the PRME Working Groups.“ Workshops are available on 13, 21 and 25 September and 5 October. There is a different registration link for each event, and they are all listed here. Each two hour workshop will feature the same content. Click the link here to download the i5 Playbook and please reach out to natascha.radclyffethomas@gcu.ac.uk for more information on the programme. Employability, Sustainability and Placements Webinar – 12th September from 1-2.30pm Earlier in 2023 the Chapter established a Sustainability, Employability and Jobs of the Future Interest group, on the initiative of Karen Cripps and Jonathan Louw at Oxford Brookes. The group is intended to provide a platform and network for those interested in working collaboratively and across institutions on research and good practice in these areas. It has had two foundational meetings; an exploratory webinar on May 18th and a workshop at the PRME UKI conference on 27 June. Having looked at the conference outputs, the intended next steps are: (1) a LinkedIn group to encourage information and resource exchange as well as networking between all those interested in these topics – you can join via this link. (2) a webinar on 12th September meeting for those particularly interested in working on a placements and internships project.
There are three potential strands to this project: (1) gather (from our institutions and more widely) and share information about all the ways placements with an ethics/CSR/sustainability/SDG etc. agenda are currently made known to staff and students. (2) identify the Teaching and learning resources that we could generate that would encourage students preparing for or on placement to seek out, engage with and reflect on their employers' sustainability etc. commitments and practices (3) work out how to engage at a national and/or local level with employers offering placements to (a) make them aware of student demand (b) encourage them to make the sustainability etc. dimensions of available roles more explicit in their advertising. We see the PRME relationship with UNGC as an important (but by no means the only) lever in this regard. This next meeting has already been publicised to all those who attended one or both of our foundational meetings. Registration for anyone else wishing to join the webinar on 12 September is here. Read the work of our 2022/23 Student Writing Competition Winners The Chapter has run a student writing competition for the past 7 years, designed to celebrate and bring to a wider audience excellent student writing on themes of responsibility, sustainability, ethics, SDGs etc. We have now uploaded the work of 22-23 finalists and winners to our website, if they have given us permission to do so. We hope you will take a look at some of the entries and encourage entries from your own institutions when we launch our 8th competition for 23-24 in October this year. The closing date for submissions will be the end of February 2024. While congratulating last year’s winners once again, we would also like to thank our volunteer judges for all of their generous, pro bono efforts on both of the chapter and competition. Call for Collaboration – PRME Principles in PG Dissertations - Lancaster University Management School Lancaster University Management School is launching a new project Co-creating sustainable communities: Dissertation In Place, led by Professor Radka Newton and The Good Place Innovators team. The team proposes to develop an innovative, engaged and digitally enhanced dissertation framework for Postgraduate Dissertations. The project addresses the need for greater authenticity and relevance of dissertations and demonstrates a direct commitment to Lancaster’s civic commitment and responsible management education agenda. The aim is for the students to be able to work on place-based challenges identified by the project partner Groundswell Innovation that are aligned with relevant UNSDGs impacting the regional ecosystem. We are looking for inspirational practices from the PRME members who have incorporated PRME principles in postgraduate dissertations and are willing to share their learning.
Please, email r.newton@lancaster.ac.uk if you wish to connect. Update on Chapter Secretariat We regret that we are still unable to confirm our future Chapter Secretariat arrangements. Many Chapter administrative functions are continuing but the one thing we are unable to do at the moment is process income or expenditure. For those needing to claim back expenses or make payments, please log your claim or other requirements with Jonathan Louw (jlouw@brookes.ac.uk) and as soon as we have a Secretariat in place we will process this. We do apologise for this delay. Chapter Local Networks In coming newsletters we shall be publicising events planned for the new academic year by our seven Local Networks across Ireland and the UK. Our local networks are where members work at local level on supporting each other in building good RME practice. If you are not in touch with a local network and would like to be, find contact details for each network on our website here. Chapter Events Calendar If you’re organising a Chapter-related event or wanting to find out what is on, please remember to check our Chapter Events calendar. Additions and enquiries can be emailed to our PRME Intern, Katie Lee on katie.lee@unglobalcompact.org.uk Katie will also shortly be issuing a further update on UNGC engagement opportunities in September and October. Items for future news updates Local Network Co-ordinators and other event organisers, when you run a PRME event do send us a short report afterwards (with links to any relevant resources) for wider publicity through these newsletters. Send them to Katie on the email address noted above. That’s it for now – best wishes from the UK and Ireland Chapter Steering Committee