President's Award for the Environment

President’s Award for the Environment 2014

The Institute of Technical Education (ITE) is widely-recognised for its dedication to environmental education. Together, the Headquarters’ and three Colleges’ (ITE College Central, ITE College East and ITE College West) have in place an Environmental Sustainability Initiatives Framework which promotes awareness of environmental issues among staff and students by encouraging them to be more conscious of the environmental impact of their actions in everyday life. The framework focuses on three broad areas:

Greening our built environment

ITE’s passion for the environment resonates in the architecture of its Headquarters and Colleges. They incorporate best practices in environmental design and construction, and adopt green building technologies. Extensive green walls and rooftop gardens, and photovoltaic panels to generate electrical power and rainwater harvesting are but a few of the many green features that can be found at its Colleges. The ITE Headquarters & College Central complex, which was officially opened in 2013, was conferred the BCA Green Mark Platinum Award. ITE College West was also conferred the BCA Green Mark Platinum Award, while ITE College East was awarded the Gold Award at the point of their completion.

Infused in curricula

Environmental education has also been infused into ITE students’ formal and informal curricula. Environment-related topics, such as recycling, waste handling and disposal, course-relevant environmental regulations, and course-specific electives like Energy Audit and Management and Water Efficiency Management, are included in about 70% of ITE’s courses. All ITE students are introduced to environmental sustainability initiatives during orientation. These are reinforced through workshops, camps, projects and overseas study trips to build up environmental awareness during their years in ITE. As a result, ITE students graduate with a keen sense of awareness of their roles and responsibilities in sustaining the environment, both on a personal and professional basis.

Staff, students & community

ITE has also formed many valued partnerships with the community through established eco-programmes, which empower the students to educate the community on ‘green’ issues while serving them. ITE is also the first Post-Secondary Education Institution in Singapore to be a part of the Eco-Schools Programme, run by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which gives opportunities to students to be trained as leaders of environment initiatives under a green-campus programme.

For its efforts in raising environmental awareness, ITE has been recognised with the Singapore Environmental Achievement Award in 2013. ITE students have also been awarded the HSBC/NYAA Youth Environmental Award and Bayer Young Environmental Envoy Award in recent years.