Teaching Sustainability in Higher Education in the Field of Economics and Management Erasmus Project

Project Title

Teaching Sustainability in Higher Education in the Field of Economics and Management

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Social/environmental responsibility of educational institutions; Environment and climate change

Project Summary

Title of a project is: Teaching Sustainability in Higher Education in the Field of Economics and Management (acronym: SUSTA). Its total duration is foreseen for 2 years.
The reason to apply for Erasmus+ project comes from strong conviction that environmental issues have to be addressed also by economics universities. As a result the main objective of the project is to create an involving concept of teaching sustainability for students of business related studies which will result in raising the awareness and involvement in the problems of sustainability.
A leader of the project is the Poznan University of Economics and Business (PUEB). As partners, 5 universities from countries that differ in terms of the environmental concern were chosen. Project partners include: Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche in Spain (MHU), Czech University of Life Sciences (CULS), University of Zagreb (UZ), The Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra (SUA) and The University of Szeged in Hungry (US).
5 intellectual outputs (IO) will be delivered.
IO1 (coordinated by US) is dedicated to prepare a strong basis for developing next IOs. The aims of IO1 are to provide a research-based background in order to develop syllabus and teaching materials for sustainability. IO1 is concentrated not only on the analysis of students awareness on sustainability issues, their expectations connected with the teaching sustainability but also on existing university courses on sustainability in partners’ countries.
Based on the results of IO1 the syllabus of teaching course on sustainability will be designed as an IO2 (coordinated by UZ). To reach this goal the dictionary of required skills and competences regarding the sustainability will be developed. The dictionary will describe the profile of a student which is aware of running a business in sustainable manner.
In IO3 (coordinated by SUA) learning materials on sustainability for students in the form of e-book will be prepared. It will be divided into modules and units according to syllabus (IO2). E-book will be possible to download for free from the webpage of the SUSTA project and from webpages of all partners’ universities.
Collection of case studies on sustainability will be prepared as IO4 (coordinated by HMU). It will describe real world examples of managing companies in sustainable manner. Case studies will be based on companies from all countries of partnership.
Creating movies on teaching sustainability will be the IO5 (coordinated by CULS). The videos of all course content will be prepared and uploaded at youtube channels of SUSTA project and channels of partners’ universities.
3 activities will be performed within timeframe of the project: transnational meetings (TM), multiplayer events (ME) and summer school (SS).
To ensure the correct progress and successful accomplishment of the project 5 TM meetings are planned.
Objectives of ME will be to disseminate projects results, to present and validate of the teaching materials, as well as to build broad network of stakeholders interested in sustainability issues for educational purposes.
The aim of SS is to test results of intellectual outputs and get feedback from students to make final improvements of teaching materials. Content of the course will be presented for students by teachers/researchers from partners’ institutions. Additional goal of SS is to record videos of the course.
The project will be managed according to basic components of PRINCE2 methodology. According to it number of management activity will be taken. There will be a preparation and execution of: Quality Management Strategy, Risk Strategy, Communication Strategy (a crucial part of it will be Dissemination Strategy) and Benefit Review Plan.
The project will influence local, regional and national level (in each participating country) in following areas: improvement of the quality of higher education by providing unique sustainability course, increase of widespread use of innovative teaching materials, development of the knowledge on sustainability among university students, raise of the awareness of the sustainability issues among business trainers, representatives of employees and NGO’s, increase of the quality of labour force by highly educated (in the field of sustainability) universities’ alumni.
Access to the project webpage (and the entire content) will exceed the time frame of the project. Therefore all IOs produced during the SUSTA project duration will be openly accessible after the end of the EU funding. No time restriction and open access to the IOs will make possible to provide courses on sustainability after SUSTA project ends. These courses will be delivered at partners universities. That will strengthen the durability of the project results. After completion of the project, university institutions from beyond the partnership will be encouraged to use the sustainability materials in their education activities.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 177355 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIWERSYTET EKONOMICZNY W POZNANIU & Country: PL

Project Partners

• Česká zemědělská univerzita v Praze
• UNIVERSIDAD MIGUEL HERNANDEZ DE ELCHE
• SZEGEDI TUDOMANYEGYETEM
• SLOVENSKA POLNOHOSPODARSKA UNIVERZITA V NITRE
• SVEUCILISTE U ZAGREBU