THE International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) has won the 2020 Sustainability Institution of the Year Award.
This was announced yesterday by the 2020 International Green Gown Awards in an online bilingual ceremony hosted by Sonya Peres, Climate Commission Officer from EAUC and Carina Mutschele, Youth & Education from the United Nations Environment.
Explaining why IIUM clinched the award, Peres said: "The continuous change in the higher education landscape has forced universities to respond with a diverse model of university to make themselves relevant. Despite a more demanding need for a contextualised model, the predominant force of neoliberalism still significantly influences and shapes the outcome.
"Against this trend, IIUM has embarked on a journey to showcase a Malaysian model of university that addresses Sustainable Development issues in a holistic manner, taking the whole institutional transformation (WIT) process as its approach.
"This WIT model hopes to change the university ecosystem by pushing the university agenda to systemically serve the community together with other stakeholders – government agencies and industries/business players.
"This WIT approach, through its two initiatives, is aimed at making IIUM a multidimensional enterprise that draws on the full range of human capacities for learning to know, learning to do, learning to be and learning to live together – in the spirit of making W-hole I-nstitution T-Transformation for H-umanising U-niversity, Making A Novelty – WIT for HUMAN."
The awards ceremony was part of the HESI (Higher Education for Sustainability Initiative) event at the UN High-Level Political Forum in New York City.
The International Green Gown Awards celebrate the exceptional sustainability initiatives being undertaken by universities and colleges across the world.
It is endorsed by United Nations Environment and supported by The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), L'Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), The Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI) and International Association of Universities (IAU).
Established as the most prestigious recognition of sustainability best practices within the education sector globally, the International Green Gown Awards provide benchmarks for excellence and are aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
In the category of 'Benefitting Society' – small institution – the winner is Ayrshire College, UK, while for the same category for large institution, Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola, Peru, won the award.
In the category of 'Student Engagement' – small institution – the winner is Implication des étudiants Facens University, Brazil; while for large institution, the award went to University of Strathclyde, UK.