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About 20 students from Masaryk University Brno visited two eco-farmers and activists on 13 May 2016. The first farm is called Kudlov s.r.o. run by Jan Sveda. He bought the farm in June 2012. It is part of a bigger agricultural company, which already successfully works in the region. The aim is to breed cattle and sheep in a natural way, which helps to revive the soil after many years of intensive farming. In 2015, the production of milk and dairy products was opened. All these products are labeled BIO. Mr. Sveda himself is a very inspiring person with an unusual background. For example, he studied agriculture in Great Britain and was later employed by an Arabian sheikh. It was very inspiring to get insights from him.

The second farm Manner is active in the revitalization of rural landscape. Activist Jiri Novotný, head of Manner, wants to „give back a face“ to the landscape which was devasted in the fifties of the last century, which practically means to revive the soil, reduce impacts of floods, increase biodiversity etc. The farm also focuses on eco-farming, especially breeding cattle and sheep on grass cover, orchard farming and brewing.

The excursion was part of the course „Management of Rural Space“, which is one of the pilot courses within the CASE project. Pilot courses help to improve the preparation of the envisaged Joint Master degree program on sustainability-driven entrepreneurship.

Report by Petra Bernatíková, Masaryk University Brno

More info about Kudlov: http://www.farmakudlov.cz

More info about Manner: http://vyskov.cz/aww/manner 

 

In spring 2016, Prof. Marco Rieckmann (University of Vechta) was invited to two meetings in Lithuania and England as a guest speaker on didactics of higher education in the context of education for sustainable development. For the 26^th of April, the Lithuanian National Commission for UNESCO had invited experts to the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Lithuania, for an exchange on how to foster sustainable development in Institutions of Higher Education (HEI). Marco Rieckmann reported on teaching and learning approaches to foster competencies for sustainable development. He presented examples of service-learning courses from his own teaching that were developed in the context of the CASE project. Furthermore he discussed teachers’ needs for capacity building in terms of competence-oriented teaching and learning for sustainable development. The second meeting took place on the 5^th of May at Plymouth University (UK) and was intended as an internal, informal exchange between experts for higher education for sustainable development of this university. Based on the Routledge Handbook of Higher Education for Sustainable Development, Marco Rieckmann presented key issues, trends and needs for future research on Higher Education for Sustainable Development. In a second part he talked about the implementation of Higher Education for Sustainable Development at the University of Vechta (Germany) and its contribution to the development of students’ sustainability competencies.

The two meetings have contributed to advance competence-oriented teaching and learning in the context of sustainable development in the landscape of European HEI.

Link to Routledge Handbook of Higher Education for Sustainable Development

The three Knowledge Alliance projects “FINCODA”, “CASE” and “Textile and Clothing – TECLO” have met for two days, 12.-13. May, in Utrecht to discuss their synergies and further possibilities for cooperation.

Harri Lappalainen (Fincoda) had initiated a meeting to join efforts and forces of similar Knowledge Alliance projects. All three projects represented in Utrecht deal with competencies needed for responsible, future-oriented businesses and they all work at the interface of science and society with partners from universities as well as business. While the Fincoda project is interested in the assessment of general innovation competencies, the CASE project wants to foster competencies for sustainability-driven entrepreneurship, and the textile and clothing project addresses specific competencies of managers in the textile and clothing industry. During the meeting, synergies were discussed concerning the common topic of fostering competencies. Particular support strategies in between the projects were planned which help to complement current activities. For example, the Fincoda project develops an assessment barometer of innovation competencies that needs to be validated in diverse settings. The CASE project tests and evaluates courses and different cooperation formats between universities and businesses that are designed for a new master program on sustainability-driven entrepreneurship. Co

nsequently, CASE can test the Fincoda barometer in order to see whether the pilot courses enhance students’ innovation competence and Fincoda gets more feedback on its assessment instrument. Likewise, the usage of the massive open online course (MOOC) developed to train textile and clothing managers in the Teclo project can be evaluated with the barometer.

Beyond these joint-testing initiatives, all three projects agreed to disseminate each other’s “products” and aim to develop further joint dissemination activities such as conferences, workshop, publications in order to reach new target groups and encourage the transnational network of Knowledge Alliances.

In short: An inspiring and very fruitful Knowledge Alliance meeting, not at least due to the warm and sunny welcome in Utrecht.

 

The Sustainability Festival is an appointment for reflection and concrete action around the concept of sustainability. From the 5th to the 7th of May, students, researchers and professors of the Free University of Bozen, together with external figures, presented different shades of the idea of sustainability, based on their own field of study.

The event was entirely organized by students and it aimed at involving a broad public through workshops and conferences. The aspiration of the Festival was not only to discuss about sustainability challenges, but also to put it into action.

Susanne Elsen and Claudia Lintner gave a presentation about CASE in a special session dedicated to ongoing research projects from the Faculties of UNIBZ about Sustainability and informed about goals, current developments and next steps of the project.

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.