Students from the University of Vechta presenting project results at the Piepenbrock company
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!
