The Green Steps program consists of two compulsory phases, plus an additional optional stage:
Training
One week of intense (but fun) training covers five key areas, detailed below. Training is highly interactive and emphasises teamwork. The style is informal, engaging, and hands-on, drawing on the experience of the group to facilitate learning. Specialist guest speakers and former Green Steps participants also share their experiences.
The training tackles the following areas:
- Environmental issues and responses: Issues such as waste, energy and water, and an understanding of organisational responses to environmental issues
- Environmental auditing: An introduction to waste, energy, water auditing, and conducting staff interviews and surveys
- Project planning and management: Action plan design, problem map creation and creative solution development
- Communication for change: Effective communication to foster change within organisations, including professional presentation and report-writing, compiling promotional materials, constructing coherent arguments and negotiation skills
- Behavioural change management: Understanding the role of the change agent, personal and organisational drivers, behavioural change theory and practice
Dates for the 2012 training program are the weekends of 11-13 May, and 18-20 May 2012. These dates will be confirmed shortly.
The training will take place at the Albury-Wodonga campus of CSU. Where possible, transport and accommodation will be provided to students not residing in Albury-Wodonga. All meals will be provided during the training course.
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CSU Sustainability Project
Green Steps participants will complete an on-campus sustainability project at CSU, in conjunction with CSU Green. Projects will be offered on-site across a number of our campuses, and will focus on specific projects of relevance to sustainability at CSU. These projects provide an exciting opportunity for students to be involved in sustainability projects that improve CSU's environmental performance. Students will be given the opportunity to use your campus as a 'living laboratory', to test skills learnt during the Green Steps training and your formal study. Each project is expected to take between 10 and 15 days.
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Optional Internship
Students will also have the option (based on availability) of undertaking an internship with an external organisation. These internships can provide students with the opportunity to hone their environmental skills on real issues, whilst gaining invaluable experience and contacts.
Internships can involve completing a small project with a host organisation, such as:
- Establishing environmental baseline or eco-footprint data
- Developing energy efficiency, carbon reduction or waste minimisation action plans
- Implementing staff behaviour change programs
- Or any other suitable project which you (or the host organisation) can dream up!
The host organisations for internships will be negotiated with individual students to try and align with your background and interests. Organisations may be not-for-profit, small business, local, state o federal governments and large corporations.
Applications for the Green Steps Program in 2012 are now open. The closing date for applications is midnight on Sunday 22nd April 2012.
Application
Your application needs to include the following information:
- A cover letter explaining why you would like to do the course
- Your curriculum vitae
- A 1 page response to the task (outlined below)
Please save your application, including the three components, in a single Microsoft Word document with your name as the file name (e.g. first name_last name.doc). The entire application document should be no larger than 300 kb.
The Task
Imagine you are an employee of a medium sized business who has half of their time allocated to delivering environmental projects. You have approached your manager about an energy saving project you would like to run in your workplace. They have asked you to develop a 1 page project brief outlining what activities you would undertake for the project in the first 6 months.
Please note that we are not looking for extensive details on the project but rather a 'snapshot', and using bullet points is accepted.
Once you have completed you application, send your application via email to csugreen@csu.edu.au
To be eligible for Green Steps you must be enrolled at CSU, and typically we require you to have completed at least one year of study.
Emphasis is given to selecting students from a range of disciplines, backgrounds and experiences. This ensures a diverse group, which improves learning outcomes and reflects the interdisciplinary and intergenerational nature of effective responses to environmental issues. This rigorous selection process ensures the selection of highly motivated and committed students who will leave Green Steps ready to enter the environment sector.
Please note that attendance at all training sessions is necessary to complete Green Steps.
Please check that you are available for all training sessions before submitting your application.
