October 2, 2019, by sustainablenottingham
A Warm Welcome
Hi! My name is Emily and I am the newest Sustainable Communications and Engagement Assistant within the Sustainability Team. Through this I will be spending the next six months aiming to strengthen the communication and promotion of the University’s sustainability initiatives, as well as to provide operational support to the Sustainability team here in the Estates Office.
Starting a new job is often daunting, especially when it requires you to move to an entirely new city. Luckily for me I’ve found everyone here at the University of Nottingham to be beyond friendly, with both staff and students going the extra mile to make me feel welcome and included. In my first week in the role I quickly discovered that finding my way around campus was going to be my biggest hurdle. If you’re like me, and you can’t tell up from down, you’ll probably be able to relate to this. As fortune would have it however a major theme of this year’s Wellbeing Fair was to promote walking and cycling around the university (as opposed to using the bus) and so I’ve been able to benefit from a significant amount of wandering around counting footsteps and timing the distance between campus buildings! This was something I found to be incredibly helpful for learning the area, as travelling different routes has led to me being able to orientate myself even when lost.
Our spin the wheel (comprising of a mixture of sustainable and healthy challenges and prizes) for the Wellbeing Fair! Did you come down and have a go?
Aside from my quest to learn my way around campus and the Wellbeing Fair, I’ve spent my first few weeks at Nottingham excitedly representing the Sustainability Department and the WasteNott campaign at both the University Park Welcome Fairs and the Sutton Bonington Welcome Fair. If you happened to stumble across our stall (sometimes shared with the Environment and Social Justice Network) then you might remember me as the blonde girl who spoke very fast and kept trying to get you to take free spaghetti measurers, if not then, unfortunately for you, you might have missed out on said spaghetti measurers and for that I’m sorry – they were awesome. This was a great way to get to meet so many of you who are passionate about sustainability, and now that the hustle and bustle of September and welcome week is winding down, I’m looking forward to seeing you all in the coming months!
October has always been one of my favourite times of the year, from the excitement it brings of a new academic year to the enjoyment of Halloween, there really is so much to do that it’s impossible to truly find yourself completely bored and without any odds and ends to occupy yourself. Included in this are the many opportunities for students to get involved in sutainability here at Nottingham, from joining one of the University’s many societies to becoming a Student Switch Off Ambassador.
If you have any ideas for how to help make Nottingha a more sustainable campus then please don’t hesistate to email me at Emily.Brookes@notttingham.ac.uk, contact the team at sustainability@nottingham.ac.uk or aply to the Environment Initiative Fund to help see your vision come true!
Conferences are a problem for environmentally-conscious academics. I recently went to a conference in The Hague, which was attended by 950 people, most of whom used air transport (including me). We were presented with a 100-page compendium of abstracts, we displayed several hundred posters that were only used once, we discarded innumerable handouts and surplus food went to waste. Meeting colleagues and sharing our work is essential to the academic life, but there must be a greener way to do this. Has anyone tackled this dilemma?