Author: d.schmelz

Representatives of the CASE project and team members of the FooD-STA project („FooD Studies and Training Alliance“) met on 30 September 2015 in order to exchange their first impressions, insights, and lessons learned of the respective projects. FooD-STA will establish an independent, self-sustainable training centre for the food industry and educational organisations while developing and implementing new teaching methods. The project is coordinated by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU).

Both CASE and FooD-STA are financed under the programme „Erasmus+ – Knowledge Alliances“. They are therefore related projects and have a lot in common. For this reason, it was agreed to further cooperate, regularly meet, and ensure an exchange of points of view and experience.

More information on the FooD-STA project can be found here.

We presented the CASE project at the 8th World Environmental Education Congress 2015 (June 29 – July 2) in Gothenburg, Sweden. In our presentation we highlighted knowledge-alliances in business-university cooperations and sustainable entrepreneurial higher education in order to discuss good practice and research questions concerning those two aspects.
The overarching theme of the international congress was „Planet and People – how can they develop together?“. The organizers purposefully left out the third P – for Profit. But still, we have interdependent economies throughout the world that are highly powerful in structuring our societies and influence our living conditions. And fortunately there are other educators and researchers like us with huge interest in changing business (education) to foster sustainable development.
Our workshop took place at the last conference day, right in the early morning. A group of very interested and engaged participants showed up. We had very intense discussion-rounds in four smaller groups, where all participants shared their experiences. New ideas and connections emerged for our work. We thank all participants for theirs fruitful contributions. Let’s stay in contact!
Just two more remarks on the issue of „terms“:
One participant pointed to the distinction between „sustainable entrepreneurial higher education“ (as named in our workshop abstract) and „entrepreneurial higher education for sustainability“. What are we heading for?
Another participant from an African country left the discussion after indicating that she was not pleased with the project intention to promote „Sustainable Entrepreneurship“. To us it seemed that she had a different understanding of the term „Sustainable Entrepreneurship“. Perhaps „entrepreneurship“ rises associations like profit, exploitation, egocentricity etc. and not so much associations like change agent, welfare and worldwide fairness.
These remarks on „terms“ may stimulate fruitful further thinking.

More infos about WEEC 2015.

 

 

CASE Kick-off meeting

The CASE project partners met on 23 January 2015 at the Vienna University of Economics and Business for the kick-off meeting of the project. Representatives of all five countries participating in the project were present.

Apart from getting to know the members of the project team, content issues concerning the CASE knowledge alliance were focused on in the meeting. The general goals of the project were discussed in depth, each and every work package was tackled, and the first activities of the project were started up.

In particular, the needs analysis, the elaboration of evaluation systems for CASE, and the installation of an interactive project web site are supposed to set a first solid basis on the road to the envisaged Joint Master Programme.

 More impressions from the CASE Kick-off meeting