The FASoS Sustainability Platform is interviewing students and staff at the faculty who are working on sustainability.
Sjoerd Stoffels started making more sustainable personal choices many years ago, but his efforts don’t end there. To him, engaging with sustainability at FASoS is a logical consequence of his motivation. Ever since he took on the lead in the FASoS Green Impact team in 2018, he has been putting work into change at FASoS.
And this work is on top of everything else. Having been an educational technologist at FASoS for ten years, Sjoerd’s position includes innovation, but only indirectly relates to sustainability. “I mostly invest my own time into sustainability-related initiatives”, he says. And he has invested a lot. When he heard of Green Impact in 2018, he saw the opportunity to initiate bottom-up change. To him, this change is much needed. The final proposal of the 2018 Green Impact team cites the Dutch universities’ Climate Letter: “Although many researchers at Dutch universities are active in the debate on climate change, our institutions themselves often have no ambitious climate agenda”.
At this point in time, there probably aren’t many people who disagree with the goal of a climate agenda. But how could such agenda look, concretely? Sjoerd is convinced FASoS needs a strategic plan for sustainability – a comprehensive one. This plan should map out organisational changes that embed sustainability in our teaching, research, operational processes and building utilisation. But the plan itself isn’t everything. Sjoerd wants to see commitment to goals and practical actions materialise. He is critical about plans that are used to advertise not change. “No more plans for drawers”.
Sjoerd has contributed to multiple plans despite the risk of deep drawers. One major accomplishment made based on a written plan is the FASoS garden. With other members of last year’s Green Impact team, Sjoerd drafted a plan to transform the dull concrete behind GG 76 into a green community space. That’s a big win for sustainability and the community!
To make these wins, Sjoerd hasn’t just been writing plans; he’s been leading, participating, connecting, and talking. And he has worked with many others along the way. What has he learned about the FASoS community while working on sustainability? He answers that many colleagues and students are happy to join green initiatives, but that people expect management to lead by good example.
We can certainly take away this hopeful message, but Sjoerd – wanting to “materialise change” – would probably want us to take away more. So I ask him what FASoS could do to make work on sustainability more successful. He would like to see recognition and rewards for this kind of work. More concretely, he thinks more incentives to join and contribute to green initiatives are necessary. The current FASoS strategic plan offers many opportunities for institutional change. If you are curious to explore them with Sjoerd and others, you’re warmly invited to join the FASoS Sustainability Platform.
The Sustainability Platform connects students and staff members who (want to) work on sustainability. You can read more about the Platform here. Please reach out to us (sustainability-fasos@maastrichtuniversity.nl) if you have questions or want to join. Time commitment is flexible and we appreciate all contributions.
By Charlotte Lenhard
