Author: Petra Biberhofer

On the 14^th of April the German “Virtual Academy for Sustainability” celebrated its fifth anniversary. For this event, teachers facilitating Higher Education for Sustainable Development around Germany were invited to a conference at the University of Bremen to present and discuss best-practice examples under the headline “Innovative transformation of teaching and learning environments for teaching sustainability competencies”.

Prof. Marco Rieckmann and Lisa Bockwoldt from the University of Vechta presented transformative project-based courses for sustainable development and sustainability-driven entrepreneurship in which students worked together with regional partners in service-learning projects. The first service-learning course was implemented in 2014 (students developed communication strategies for a local environmental NGO) and then was further developed as pilots in the context of the CASE project in the summer and the winter semester 2015 and 2016 when students developed sustainability-oriented communication strategies for two local sustainability-driven enterprises.

In the current semester, the course design has changed to foster especially entrepreneurial thinking: the students discuss challenges with different regional actors and then work on own sustainability-driven start-up projects to solve regional problems.

70 students from eight universities and universities of applied science, five professors from the four biggest universities in Vienna, three start-up experts, nine service-learning partners such as SPAR a multinational retail chain, the electricity company Verbund or the Austria Glas Recycling GmbH and the RCE Vienna came together at the Kick Off event of the Sustainability Challenge on March 7, 2016. Opening remarks by Evi Frei from the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW) and Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger, rector of the Vienna University of Economics and Business showed the importance of the course as part of the third mission of universities.

The Sustainability Challenge is an interuniversity course on sustainable development, organized on a yearly basis by the Regional Center of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development (RCE) Vienna. During two semesters students with a wide variety of backgrounds participate in this course jointly taught by five professors, each from a different institute. Students either choose a service learning project, where they work together with companies, NGOs or ministries to find solutions for concrete challenges or a new start-up option, where students get the chance to develop their very own entrepreneurial answers to the challenges in the field of sustainability.

This year’s program , organized with the support of the UNESCO-Commission and the BMWFW, focuses on “Smart City – Global Challenges, local answers” and aims at promoting a more just and social world. This is done by encouraging transdisciplinarity and by facilitating the translation of sustainability from theory into practice. Through interactive teaching practices students get encouraged to reflect upon their actions and to take different points of view.

A more sustainable education requires the development of important competencies such as the ability to analyze problems from different perspectives, the capacity to work cooperatively across disciplinary borders and strategic competence to realize ideas in practice. By allowing the development of such competencies, the Sustainability Challenge plays an important role in the educational landscape of Vienna. It brings together the four biggest universities of Vienna as organizing units, several praxis partners and 70 students to jointly address a crucial task: achieving a more sustainable future.

More information about the Sustainability Challenge.

At the early spring (15-17th March 2016), the CASE team met again in an outdoor environmental education centre situated in the south-Moravian region, Kapraluv Mlyn (The Kapral Mill). The place well reflected the values communicated by the project. The Mill is connected with the story of the Czech entrepreneur Ales Kapral, the man who was always able to cope with the challenges of his time and never lost his inventory spirit and invincible trust in the better future. The Mill is situated in the beautiful nature of Moravian Karst and the participants could remember for themselves that it is our effort to protect the nature beauty for our children, what lays deeply in our motivation looking for a more sustainable way of life.

Although the intensive agenda of the meeting, as the team had to specify the framework for pilot testing of the modules for the future master in sustainability-driven entrepreneurship, intensive discussions of some of its courses, or reflecting the mechanisms of its own teamwork, it also offered an opportunity

for enjoying the nature or contemplation about motivation and dreams of its members.

Many thanks to the host of the meeting and CASE partner, Michal Medek, director of the Kapraluv Mlyn, and let’s meet again in Vienna!

Website of Kapraluv Mlyn
More impressions from the workshop

18 students of „business and ethics: social business” from the University of Vechta presented the results of their study project at the Airbus site in Ottobrunn, Munich. During the winter semester 2015/16, the students had worked in four small groups on the topic of “Compliance and Integrity” in cooperation with Airbus. The students had analysed the compliance management at Airbus and gave advises how to improve it.
The lecturer Jürgen Sander draws a positive balance: “The students convinced with their creative ideas and their presentations at a very high level.” The persons responsible at Airbus for the compliance management were delighted and thanked for the great results and suggestions.
From the CASE perspective this is another example of a university-business cooperation that benefited both parties: the motivating challenge was a great learning opportunity for the students and the business partner got valuable feedback on its performance with “state-of-the-art” advises from university.

 

On the 25th of January 2016, four student groups from the University of Vechta presented their project results at the Piepenbrock company. During the winter semester 2015/16, Prof. Dr. Marco Rieckmann offered a service-learning course on sustainability communication in which students worked together with Piepenbrock as a project partner. 18 students collaborated with Piepenbrock – a company with nearly 27.000 employees which offers facility management and cleaning services for large companies throughout Germany. Piepenbrock is orienting its business and services towards sustainability. At the semester start, Patricia Klibert, sustainability manager at Piepenbrock, formulated some current challenges; e.g. how to include sustainability aspects in the recruitment process in order to attract skilled employees or how to improve the yearly “sustainability days” where employees can learn more about sustainability like for example sustainable housing.

The students had seven weeks to work on solutions. At the end of the semester, they presented their results in front of Piepenbrock’s sustainability team. The team was very impressed by the practical solutions the students developed for Piepenbrock and thanked the students for critical feedback as well as for creative and innovative ideas. Now it is their term to make the ideas become reality!