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The CASE team met together on 16th and 17th February 2017 in the Czech Republic, this time at the Faculty of Social Studies (Masaryk University) in Brno. In the beginning of the workshop we welcomed two new team members Antje Disterheft from Universität Vechta and Ester Konarova from Masaryk University. During the workshop we were focusing on an intense discussion about the CASE Knowledge platform which will go online in May 2017. The platform will provide tools for collaboration between universities and partners from business and civil society in order to develop competencies for transformation towards sustainability.

The short afternoon break offered us time to non-formal discussion of related topics and visiting the unique architecture master piece Vila Tugendhat. The timeless architectonical design awakened us to further intensively discuss the current pilot evaluations of various innovative courses tested in the CASE regions.

At the end of workshop we concentrated on the future Master’s Program as well as forthcoming events and conferences where we want to present CASE outputs. The CASE project is slowly getting closer to a final part and we are really looking forward to presenting our work on a final event in Vienna in the beginning of November 2017!

“Sustainability Communities” is a CASE pilot course that was delivered during the winter semester at the University of Vechta, Germany, by Senan Gardiner. In the context of this course, the students spent one weekend in December 2016 at the ecovillage “Lebensgarten” (English: “Life Garden”) near the village Steyerberg in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Over 120 people are currently living there as a community, trying out ways to live as sustainable as possible – concerning social, cultural, ecological, economic, and technological aspects. The course culminated in this excursion to show the students that many changes to communities, in order to make them more sustainable, can be both simple and profound.

This experiential learning was enriched by sessions lead by one of the founding members, former TU Berlin Professor Declan Kennedy, and some of his community colleagues who introduced the students of the course to principles of permaculture, e-mobility, and sociocracy over the three day stay.

 

Pictures by Florian Schmitt

Read more about the Pilots in all CASE Regions.

25 Experts and representatives of business, higher education institutions and non-governmental organisations met at the Impact Hub Vienna for an intensive dialogue on sustainable entrepreneurship.

This conference was part of a series of four events of the Alliance of Sustainable Universities in Austria. The initiators – the Federal Minister of Science, Research and Economy and the management bodies of the universities – aimed at a dialogue between economy, education and society. Sustainable Entrepreneurship was chosen as one of the four subject areas, besides energy, mobility and distributive justice.

The focus of this dialogue series is on the global challenges, such as climate change, scarcity of resources or social polarisation. In this context, exchange, mutual learning and cooperation shall enable the participants to jointly tackle these challenges and multiply the effect through their networks.

CASE was presented as one of the key inputs, highlighting competence and personal development as well as cooperation of universities with business and society. As one outcome of the conference, the transfer of know-how in both directions within cooperations represented a central element. This refers particularly well to the context of teaching and learning.

Another outcome of the dialogue was the necessity of integrating the social partnerships – a specific regional aspect in Austria as they play a key role in political processes. Furthermore all agreed to orientate sustainability activities according to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

The Sustainability Challenge is one of the pilot projects in CASE. It is an interdisciplinary university course involving four Viennese universities and focused on service learning projects and how to establish start-ups under sustainable auspices.

The Touch Down event of the Sustainability Challenge will take place now on 11 January at 5 pm in the Kuppelsaal at TU Vienna, Karlsplatz 13, 1040 Vienna. The CASE team would kindly invite you to this event! The invitation can be found here.

14 student teams will present the results of their work of the past 11 months. The service learning partners (Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Environment, Verbund, Spar, AGR, MA22, GB2*20, the NGO Mutmacherei, Verein Wiener Jugendzentren) and the start-up experts from the RCE Vienna, ECN (Entrepreneurship Center Network), BOKU, and Dream Academia will be among the participants.

If you want to be on board of the Touch Down event or if you want to become a partner of the Sustainability Challenge please contact Renata Krenn at the RCE Vienna.

On 11 November 2016, Prof Dr Marco Rieckmann and Lisa Bockwoldt from the University of Vechta offered a CASE teacher workshop at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna), in the premises of the RCE Vienna. Numerous members of the “Alliance of Sustainable Universities in Austria” participated in this event.

The workshop aimed at capacity building for teaching and learning with competence-oriented, inter- and transdisciplinary methods in the area of sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. A fruitful and rich discussion took place between the participants. They shared their own teaching experiences with each other. Furthermore, they discussed opportunities as well as (structural) barriers for innovative teaching and learning practices.