PSAU is making impressive progress towards embedding the UN Sustainable Development Goals into campus life and the curriculum
Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University (PSAU), based in Al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia, is at the beginning of its sustainability journey. The university was originally established in 2007 as a branch of King Saud University. In 2009, the branch merged with others to become Al-Kharj University and was renamed in 2015 to PSAU.
For the past three years, the university has turned its focus to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), considering how it can embed the goals into curricula and build partnerships locally and internationally to attain them.
PSAU is now in the top 100 Arab universities in the Times Higher Education’s Impact Rankings, which measure institutions’ progress against the 17 SDGs, and ranks seventh in Saudi Arabia in the THE World University Rankings. Sustainability is a core part of PSAU’s mission and values, with a sustainability committee dedicated to embedding it into all areas of campus life, including reducing the university’s overall energy consumption. In practice, this means policies that promote sustainable commuting via non-motorised transport or carpools, remote or condensed working to reduce commuting, prioritising pedestrian access on campus and policies for building on brownfield sites.
Abdullah Elias, professor in the electrical engineering department, has recently become the coordinator of PSAU’s ranking and academic standards unit. The goal of the department is to improve the university’s ranking in all global and regional classification bodies, including its performance in sustainability metrics. “My favourite set of rankings is THE’s Impact Rankings because often sustainability discussions focus on what governments or companies can do. These look not just at what the universities do, but how they pass on the baton to the next generation,” Elias says. “The present generation of students and the ones after them will be involved in that fight for sustainability, so we want to put them at the centre.”
Working towards the UN’s SDGs aligns with PSAU and other Saudi universities’ efforts towards Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 – a strategic vision to reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil and diversify the national economy. The kingdom has earmarked investments of more than SAR 330 billion into new projects in the power sector, increasing its electricity generation capacity to around 83 gigawatts, compared with 53 gigawatts in 2012. Embedding SDG work into the wider curriculum sits alongside these national efforts, Elias believes. “As we work towards implementing this vision, we’re also addressing the SDGs and discussing how they fit into it,” he says. Research at the university is built around both Vision 2030 and the SDGs, with academics encouraged to prioritise research that accelerates sustainability and supports social issues in the region.
Elias leads a three-pronged effort to further embed the SDGs into the university’s programmes and wider relationships. At course level, the university is considering which programmes already have an SDG element, such as renewable energy or reproductive health. “We’re looking to offer an introduction to the SDGs at the start of these courses, so students can link their output with attaining those goals,” Elias says.
From here, it’s hoped that the university can begin to offer new programmes centred around the SDGs, such as sustainable engineering. Introducing new courses can be a challenge, Elias adds, because rules in Saudi Arabia only allow course leaders to change up to 40 per cent of course content to accommodate new developments in their fields. But the university is already working on a number of new modules that will directly address some of the global challenges covered by the SDGs. That said, it’s hoped that entirely new programmes or units can be drawn up in the longer term, recruiting specialists in sustainability-focused areas within science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine.
One of the earliest projects focusing on the SDGs at PSAU was led by Elias himself in the College of Engineering. In May 2022, the college hosted the university’s first ever SDG Week, where first-year engineering students showcased projects they had been working on for the previous 12 weeks of term. In groups of three to five students, they were asked to come up with an engineering solution that would address at least one of the SDGs. Elias mentored the groups and checked in with them weekly. Some of the projects addressed issues local to the university, such as a two-in-one portable table that allowed students to be more comfortable and less distracted in class. Others looked at environmental issues in the surrounding area, for example a waste disposal solution that saved time and money by letting waste collection vans know when bins were full, rather than them completing a full circuit where some would be empty.
This project-focused introduction to the SDGs has been so successful that other disciplines intend to replicate it, and 2023 will see the first university-wide SDG Week. Elias is advising faculty on how they can introduce students to the SDGs and integrate them into their own team-based projects. The winning projects from across the university will be showcased at the THE Global Sustainable Development Congress at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia in May 2023.
Sharing the breadth and importance of the SDGs with other academics has been a vital first step. “For many professors, this is their first real contact with the SDGs so they’ve been asking how we do this,” Elias says. As multiple disciplines at PSAU begin their sustainability projects and consider how their academic work fits into the UN’s goals, the university looks to have a brighter and greener future.
Read more about the outcomes of the 2022 SDG Week.
Find out more about Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University.
