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We have matured as a University founded to serve the region of Western Sydney. This strategy is underpinned by the University’s key strategic initiatives that are well progressed and are constantly developing and evolving. It builds on our commitment to sustainability as a central principle in our new strategic plan Sustaining Success 2021 – 2026.
We will need to further develop resilience and just responses to climate change, future pandemics and inequality at a number of levels – by creating resilient graduates and supporting staff to do so, developing a resilient, innovative campus network, and by ensuring economic resilience to enable us to invest in impactful learning and research activities.
Our Nine Interconnected Priority Statements provide the strategic platform through which the University can focus our staff and students, connect with the Greater Western Sydney community, and engage with our partners to learn, enable, adapt, transition and harness our collective knowledge to deliver meaningful impact.
Focus and investment in sustainability, resilience, equity and justice is critical throughout the next decade. Strategic and operational platforms are crucial to ensuring the principles outlined in this Decadal Strategy will be strengthened within our organisation.
The impact of COVID-19 will continue to be significant in relation to the capacity for investment, so planning strategies need to be cognisant of sensitivity for staging of investment to address both key resilience and sustainability risks, such as those for climate change in Western Sydney, and provide pathways towards deepening our institutional responsibility and contribution to pragmatic and effective progress over the next decade.
Curriculum
Education is an important force for the promotion of equity, equality, fairness and social justice in our wider society. For a 21st century facing cascading crises including pandemics and climate change, as well as social and economic disruption, the University of the future will need to be agile, responsive and prepared. We have developed internationally recognised teaching and research programs based on pushing academic boundaries – from the early days of the “Hawkesbury Experiment” and systems agriculture, to social ecology, to the establishment of the Institute of Culture and Society recognising the critical importance that culture and cultural theory plays in social development. Our sustainability and resilience work sits across disciplines and demands creative arts and humanities responses as well as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) focus. We advocate a STEAM approach – STEM inclusive of Arts/Humanities that will generate new responses to sustainability and resilience challenges.
For our students the 21st Century Curriculum (21C) Project is a key initiative of the University’s response to a disrupted future of work that offers graduates new opportunities and demands that universities equip our students with new knowledge and abilities for their future success.
The University’s commitment to anchor the growing cities of Western Sydney means we seek to ensure the social benefits of projected economic growth address the significant social disadvantage in the region. Western will ensure that our curriculum not only works well as a system, providing students with the skills they need for a rapidly evolving future of work, but that it works as part of the wider Greater Western Sydney region and beyond.
Operations
For our campus infrastructure and operations, a key aspect of resilience planning has been the focus on systemic connectivity, and strategies to mitigate ‘cascading failures’. A Preliminary Resilience Assessment was undertaken in 2019/2020, focusing on climate change risks for our campus infrastructure and campus communities of practice.
This scope informs broader social, infrastructure and landscape imperatives due to the ongoing development and role of Western within the region. Embedding resilience in strategy and planning is through the following key initiatives:
- Enhancing capacities across the CORE domains (Curriculum, Operations, Research and Engagement), promoting citizen scholarship and Living Labs, and developing resilient precincts through Green Star Communities;
- Enhancing integrative infrastructure strategies (including sustainable energy and water strategies), strategic asset planning, and design for thermal tolerance and protection and;
- Implementing adaptation strategies for design and operations, such as HVAC demands and passive thermal design, thermal comfort through shading and refuges, and readiness for increasing bushfire risk and storm damage.
The Environmental Sustainability Action Plan 2020 has been developed as a guide to the development of campus infrastructure and other operational areas. It covers initiatives focused on resilience and climate change, biodiversity conservation, regenerative and sustainable peri-urban agriculture, sustainable energy, water cycle management, waste and circular economy and social and corporate responsibility. Through the Living Labs agenda these campus operations are closely linked to learning and teaching across disciplines.
Our Western Growth Strategy has at its core the development of economic resilience for the University through rethinking our campus footprint and converting underutilised assets to future income streams. The design and construction of Western Growth initiatives is sector- leading in adopting resilience and sustainability strategies. The Penrith Sustainable Innovation Community initiative will provide a platform for academic, research, community, industry, government and University collaboration of world-leading place-making strategies for a better world – enabling the University to leverage this precinct as a showcase for sustainability and resilience strategies, and obtain learnings to further develop our thinking on how to best support into the future.
Research
Our research addresses issues of immediate and long-term significance for sustainability. During the summer of 2019/20 extreme urban heat was experienced across the region where on 4 January 2020, Penrith recorded 48.9 degrees Celsius, and becoming the hottest record in the Sydney Basin. World-leading research at Western has highlighted the critical relationship between rapid urban development and extreme heat. Our Research Theme Champions initiative was established in 2016 by appointing Western Sydney University academics tasked with creating flexible team structures for collaborative research; developing an overarching vision for their research theme connected to society’s grand challenges; increasing research output and impact in complex and interdisciplinary research areas; mapping of research focus in the University; servicing those areas of research strengths; and increasing awareness of, capacity within, and alignment with the designated University research themes.
Eight Theme Champions from a range of disciplines are leading our
research agenda across the four Research Themes:
Engagement
Engagement is viewed as a partnership for mutual benefit between the University and its communities, be they regional, national or global. It is also seen as a distinctive way of carrying out research, teaching, learning and service. Through these activities, working in partnership with our many and varied communities, we aim to contribute to the development, wellbeing and prosperity of the communities and regions we serve, starting with Western Sydney.
At Western, we believe in lifelong learning and have established a series of ongoing programs to engage and inspire primary and secondary school students to see the exciting possibilities that await them in higher education. Ongoing programs such as our Widening Participation initiative encourages students from non-traditional and low socioeconomic backgrounds to see their participation in higher education as not only achievable, but a setting in which they can thrive in. By developing an SDG 2030 schools’ strategy we can encourage the leaders of tomorrow to engage with sustainability challenges and opportunities today.
Learning to live in a post COVID-19 world
We are faced by the immediate challenge of learning to live in a post COVID-19 world. The COVID-19 global pandemic3 was declared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in March 2020. In the Western Sydney region this was preceded by a historical bushfire crisis across south-eastern Australia that was followed by widespread regional flooding. During the summer of 2019/20 extreme urban heat was experienced across the region where on 4 January 2020, Penrith recorded 48.9 degrees Celsius, and becoming the hottest record in the Sydney Basin. World-leading research has highlighted the critical relationship between rapid urban development and extreme heat. These unprecedented ‘events’ took place as Australia’s annual environmental report recognised that 2019 was ‘probably the worst in a century or more’.4 With 40 additions to the threatened species list in 2019, this annual report clearly demonstrates how ecosystems are falling apart and struggling to recover before the next major disturbance.
During the first half of 2020 COVID-19 had taken the world by storm, deeply affecting the social and economic fabric of both cities and rural areas on a global scale. In less than 90 days since the first identified case in Wuhan, China, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was already recorded in over 215 countries and territories.5 The interconnectedness of our globalised world has facilitated the spread of this virus. The disruption that emerging new pandemics could continue to cause is exacerbated by our societal dependence on global production systems. It has compounded existing social inequities: a person’s risk of infection, and the quality of their access to health services, is subject to national, racial and socioeconomic realities predating the virus’ spread.
The questions this Decadal Strategy asks are many. The most critical one is:
How can we invest in a healthy, green and just recovery that tackles inequality, contributes both to the urgent global task as well as a much needed Western Sydney context of addressing climate change adaptation, and ensures health and wellbeing of both humans and the planet?
