Stellenbosch University - Civil Engineering’s Post

🌍 We’re almost two months into the new academic year at Antwerp Management School, and it's already been very inspiring! 💬 It’s a privilege to engage with brilliant #students from all around the #world, each bringing unique #perspectives to the table. With #sustainability at the heart of our programs, these students are diving deep into some of the most #pressing and #underexplored #SDG challenges, collaborating in groups to develop impactful solutions within their #action #learning #projects. 💡 Watching this young generation’s #commitment and #innovation in action gives us a glimpse of a brighter, more sustainable #future. Exciting times ahead! Kateryna Podkalenko - Ans De Vos - Sofie Jacobs - Robin De Cock - Eva Peeters - Katrien Engels - Laura Ivette Ballesteros Mendoza - Karen Wouters - Kathleen Vangronsvelt - Riet Coenen - Britt Van Mieghem #AntwerpManagementSchool #Sustainability #SDG #HigherEducation #FutureLeaders #DiversityInEducation #ImpactfulLearning

💡New survey highlights critical need for tailored sustainability training in academia Our recent Faculty Engagement survey conducted with the help of our many partners reveals significant gaps in sustainability training among faculty worldwide. It advocates for tailored training programs that consider the diverse academic profiles from Sustainability Deniers to New Enthusiasts. With responses from 425 academics across 42 countries, the results underscore the urgency of embedding sustainability comprehensively across curricula, not just in isolated courses. 🗣️"We need to embed sustainability comprehensively across curricula to achieve real transformation," explains Aurélien DECAMPS, our co-founder. "This involves leadership support, continuous education, and integration into university operations." 🔗For more insights and strategic recommendations, check out the full article by University World News: https://lnkd.in/eXt6PUgW 🌟 Join the movement! Transforming education through sustainability can make your students not just learners but active contributors. Let's make sustainability a core topic across all disciplines! #highereducation #sustainability #TASKbySulitest

What I great workshop it was! Thank you Eva van den Dungen for an excellent visual facilitation of our creative ideas :) Working daily on campus operations, employees are constantly challenged to think ahead. How can today's investments reduce our carbon footprint in fifty years? Which landscaping decisions will reduce heat in ten years? How will hybrid or online studying influence enrolment? These questions reflect their efforts to navigate uncertainty —how their decisions influence the future.  Despite our best efforts, expertise and degrees, we can't predict the future with certainty; instead, we face a spectrum of different futures. Every decision we make influences the trajectory toward a specific future. Thanks to backasting theory we can dive into the futures thinking framework to explore these potential pathways, identify preferred futures, and outline possible steps to realize them. I highly recommend it in the professional and personal life! So, what will your campus look like in 2124? What do you need to do today to achieve it? Stefanie Essaadi thank you once again for co-creating the workshop!

Want to be educated to help change the world? Whether in healthcare, food, mobility or finance – to ensure just and sustainable futures for all, we need to transform just about every system in the coming decades. Would you like to learn how to understand, empower, accelerate, help guide and influence these transitions ahead? Erasmus University Rotterdam offers a transdisciplinary Master in Societal Transitions! Combining knowledge from various disciplines and practice, the program teaches students how to understand, interpret and work on complex societal sustainability challenges. It is based on transformative learning, including attention for reflexivity and personal growth. But also doesn't work towards a traditional thesis, but they work as a team on a transformative intervention to actually make a change together, use it to better understand a specific societal challenge and the potential of radical transition. 

Exciting news! Thrilled to announce that starting from March 1st, I am joining the International Team at Hochschule Trier, Umwelt-Campus Birkenfeld as a Project Collaborator for "Global Innovation for Sustainable Futures." This initiative focuses on #internationalization, #digitalization, and #sustainability. Looking forward to contributing to this transformative project over the next two years! #NewBeginnings #Sustainability #ProjectManagement #GlobalInnovation #SustainableFutures

As you have brewed, so you must drink. 9 months ago I had the chance to visit (the high school/upper secondary) Gymnasiet Grankulla samskola (GGS) in my role as associate dean of sustainability at Hanken School of Economics, where I spoke on the European #GreenComp framework, particularly on the needed sustainability competences for the #EUGreenDeal. After the visit I made a post lamenting on the unrealized synergies between high schools and universities in terms of collaboration to ensure esp. #sciencebasedknowledge on topics that are complex/moving fast. It also struck me how universities usually have a lifelong learning strategy that is basically a praxis of "middle-age post university learning" - and nothing wrong with that - but it hardly balances the needs of post graduates with those of other age groups and other education levels (compared eg to UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning definitions). I definitely do not appreciate the often sycophantic nature of Linkedin posts, but perhaps sometimes it is good to write out stuff like the above so that you will be held for your beliefs. As I was. Fast forward 9 months, to last Monday which saw the expedited launch of Hanken's joint pilot course with GGS "Organisering för hållbara framtider" (Organising for Sustainable Futures). We have 26 enthusiastic students from GGS that will part-take in our pilot, aligned with providing key skills outlined in the #EUGreenComp. Building on Hanken's ideal of seeing students as active knowledge-producers, will use the course to produce material for a more scaled-up course version in the future. Already now highlighting the fantastic positive and proactive work of GGS's Antonia Lindqvist and Harriet Lassus-Utriainen for making everything operational in suuperquick time. Thanks also to Mats Lehto, who acts as a mentor and a generational and organizational bridge for us in the course. Equally big thanks to Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes and Pia Polsa for volunteering to deliver their knowledge and expertise into the course. Sustainability, alongside #entrepreneurship, are imo great points of departure for this kind of collaboration, and big thanks also to Hanken's B-Lab and Markus Wartiovaara for hosting some of the students after the long first day.

TODAY! Learn about various #careers in #sustainability!

✨ Thrilled to complete the COIL Course on Innovative Approaches towards a Sustainable Society! I'm proud to have been part of a global learning journey, exploring sustainable solutions with international peers of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Key Takeaways: - Integrating sustainability into diverse lifestyles. - Strategies for promoting sustainable development and ethical responsibility - Power of global collaboration and diverse perspectives Grateful for this opportunity to learn and grow with a talented group of individuals. #Sustainability #GlobalCollaboration

After a long wait, I am thrilled to announce the publication of our recent paper co-authored with Dr Chong Xiao (Zoe) and Dr Theresa Kwong - "Developing and Validating a Scale to Measure Tertiary Students’ Sustainability Competence in Extracurricular Settings in Asia"! I am immensely grateful for the expertise and invaluable contributions of my former colleague Zoe, whose insights played a pivotal role in refining our approach to scale development. Additionally, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Theresa for her support throughout this journey. Through our collaborative efforts, we've successfully developed a Sustainability Competence Scale that accurately measures the sustainability competence of tertiary students with precision and reliability. I take great pride in sharing that our study has been published in Cogent Education, further enriching the discourse on sustainability education and assessment methodologies. Lastly, I've come to recognize that scale development is not solely a technical endeavor but also deeply humanistic. I've learned that embracing diverse perspectives and approaches is crucial, as no single method can fully capture the complexity and nuances of sustainability competence. Key highlights of our paper include: 🔍 Development and validation of a comprehensive scale for assessing students' sustainability competence in extracurricular settings in Asia. 🔍 Utilization of the five-competence framework encompassing systems thinking, future thinking, values thinking, strategic thinking, and interpersonal competence. 🔍 Identification of deficiencies in the constructive alignment of education for sustainable development (ESD) and the lack of valid assessment tools. 🔍 Efforts to address these shortcomings through the development of a valid assessment tool that offers a holistic and integrated approach to evaluating ESD effectiveness, particularly in extracurricular settings. 🔍 Implementation of the mini-scenario technique in the development of the Sustainability Competence Scale to enhance item clarity and facilitate self-rating. Xiao, C., Wan, K., & Kwong, T. (2024). Developing and validating a scale to measure tertiary students’ sustainability competence in extracurricular settings in Asia. Cogent Education, 11(1). https://lnkd.in/gKXUGUJ7 #ScaleDevelopment #SustainabilityCompetence #EducationForSustainableDevelopment #Grateful  

🤔 Sustainability skills are an essential part of media studies at Turku University of Applied Sciences Arts Academy. The new curriculum integrates sustainability themes in learning goals more comprehensively than before. 🌳 Recently, research group leader Milla Järvipetäjä and degree programme leader Markus Hatakka presented the curriculum renewal process to the staff of the Turku UAS Arts Academy. This renewal was carried out as a part of the international, Erasmus+-funded SUMED project. As part of the process, the teaching staff received training on sustainability issues, and some pilot courses were developed. 👍 Two interesting tools were used during the curriculum renewal process. One of them was the pilot course Sustainable Media, which provided a platform to gather students’ opinions and feedback. For example, students had the opportunity to review the current curriculum and even design their ideal course. 📄The second tool, developed within the SUMED project, was a matrix designed to embed various sustainability skills into course planning. Markus Hatakka noted that this matrix significantly aided teachers in aligning course content with sustainability learning goals. 🌱 Järvipetäjä observed that social and cultural sustainability themes were the easiest to integrate into media studies. “Green skills, such as ecological topics, were more challenging to incorporate, but we successfully managed to integrate them into several courses,” Järvipetäjä said. Both Järvipetäjä and Hatakka emphasized that sustainability themes should be integrated into the actual course implementation and addressed when teaching future work-life skills. #sustainabilityeducation #highereducation #sustainability #sustainablemedia #highereducation #responsibility #mediastudies #mediaeducation #greenskills #euprojects #erasmus @turkuuas @artsacademy