Embedding sustainability into education and the student experience

We are training the next generation of global changemakers who strive to address the climate emergency and shape climate action. By embedding sustainability into the curriculum and integrating climate research into our teaching across our faculties, all King’s students will have access to environmental and sustainability education.

King’s already offers many undergraduate and postgraduate degree programmes and more than 100 modules on sustainability and climate change including Sustainability & Ethics and Sustainable Cities. 

Our online co-curricular Sustainability & Climate module offers King’s students and staff a meaningful understanding of sustainability, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and how they connect to their studies, work and career goals.

King’s Strategy 2026 strengthens the university’s commitment to Education for Sustainable Development. By 2026, we will provide environment, climate and sustainability taught and extra-curricular education for all King’s undergraduates, expanding our research-enhanced postgraduate programmes alongside Continuing Professional Development and Executive Education. Professor Rachel Mills is the Senior Sponsor for this work and an Education Working Group has been established to facilitate progress.

A broad programme of extra-curricular activities help students learn, gain experience and be empowered to take climate action.

Want to boost your knowledge of sustainability and make your CV stand out? Then the KEATS Sustainability & Climate Module is what you‘re looking for!

This open-access, interdisciplinary module on environmental sustainability has been co-created with students. It offers everyone, no matter their field, a broad and critical understanding of sustainability and the climate crisis.

Enrol on KEATS

Learn about climate science, justice, sustainable agriculture and much more from seminal speakers in the field. This open-access seminar series is interactive and empowering, motivating participants to take action.

During monthly 90-minute sessions, you will engage with the subject in breakout room discussions and Q&As with each speaker. 

This series runs yearly between October and June, with around one seminar per month. Complete the form below to sign up and get in touch if there is a topic you would like the series to cover or if you are keen to collaborate.

Register your interest for the seminar series

In the 2023/24 academic year, King's offered funding to support the embedding of Education for Sustainability within curricula.

Find out more about the fund (internal), read about the 2023-34 awarded winners, or discover more climate & sustainability-related funding opportunities at King's.

The results of King’s UN Sustainable Development Goals curriculum mapping were presented at King's Academy Festival 2022, an annual event to share teaching and education innovation and best practice.

The presentation included recommendations of how to embed Education for Sustainable Development into teaching. A recording of the interactive session is available to King's students and staff by emailing sustainability@kcl.ac.uk

View the presentation slides and a poster presented during the festival.

From 2024, we have also developed an EfS Toolkit, which is available to all staff via SharePoint.

King's welcomes ideas from undergraduate or postgraduate students who would like to explore sustainability and climate action as part of a research project. Successful students are expected to plan and deliver their project with support from a supervisor.

There are a number of questions we are working on and King's Climate & Sustainability team can offer an initial discussion on these challenges, providing data where it is available or recommending sources of information.

Research projects could be from the current challenges listed below or something completely different. Contact sustainability@kcl.ac.uk to learn more.

See current challenges for project ideas

King's offers a range of courses and modules that explore environment and sustainability topics. In 2021-22, a student-led curriculum audit took place across the university that analysed modules and courses to understand their links to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The modules and courses were also mapped against Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) teaching and learning approaches, which include methods such as case studies, problem-based learning and participatory learning. The initial results from the ESD audit have been published and this framework will shape our future work on Education for Sustainable Development.

The 2021-22 curriculum mapping updates the 2020-21 review of climate and sustainability modules by King’s Climate Action Network and a 2016-17 SDG module audit published in our annual Environmental Sustainability Report. King’s baseline review of ESD in 2014 was published in Learning for Change: Review of Education for Sustainable Development at King’s College London.

A review of the content will be carried out during the 2024-25 academic year.

This 2022-23 project, funded by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) for Higher Education, brought together the University of Gloucestershire (UoG), University of the Arts London (UAL) and King’s College London. The aim of this project was to create a blueprint for quality sustainability learning and to assist students on all degree programmes to be a driving force for sustainability practise at their university.

The project draws on an Education for Sustainability (EfS) module rating approach, first developed at UoG. The three participating universities tested and refined the rating approach, adapting the principles to each university setting and specific courses examined. This work was done with the help of trained students to assess the quality of EfS integration at their home institution, identifying best practice examples and areas for EfS development.

Find out more via the project page and video. 

King’s Sustainability in Practice module has been run successfully since 2020-21 by the Department of Geography.  Find out more about the module.

To support the programme, King’s Climate & Sustainability team develops on-campus sustainability projects for students to work on as part of the module. This allows them to use King’s campuses as a 'living lab', solve real sustainability challenges and present the potential solutions back to the university for consideration.

King’s degree courses recognise the emergence of new sustainability jobs in low-carbon technologies and new climate considerations in business and policy.

We aspire to prepare our students for the transforming job market, while ensuring they can make a positive contribution to addressing climate change.

We offer undergraduate degrees exploring environment and sustainability, research-informed Master's programmes dedicated to climate, as well as more than 100 climate-related modules.