European Deans Council for Designing Sustainability Impact Roadmaps Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Deans Council for Designing Sustainability Impact Roadmaps

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; Quality Improvement Institutions and/or methods (incl. school development); Civic engagement / responsible citizenship

Project Summary

The DECODE Sustainability project aims at fostering the institutionalisation of Sustainable Development in university department to spearhead their contributions to sustainability, aimed necessary for addressing challenges in European societies, industries and economies. The DECODE Sustainability project will develop a tool-based process to ensure an innovative, relevant and dynamic upskilling and collaborative approach that stimulates entrepreneurial and engaged thinking and acting in deans, aiming at strengthening their commitment and decisions towards increasing sustainability impacts.

Higher Education is considered a pre-requisite in the advancement of sustainability due to their mandate of creating knowledge and forming new leaders with the competences and vision to foster change (EC 2019; Cheeseman 2019). However, HEI efforts, although echoed across national strategies and policies, remain at an operational level that has yet to transcend to a systemic embeddedness (UNESCO 2015). The DECODE Sustainability project addresses the need of strengthening the link between HE and sustainability by providing HEIs with a suitable tool-based process to institutionalise SD at the department level and contribute to its impact.

To accomplish its primary goal of institutionalising SD at departmental level, the project puts HEI deans in the focus. HEI deans are often regarded as the main driving force behind strategic initiatives such as SD, yet the assumption that HEI deans possess the relevant skills to ensure strategising and operationalising SD often does not hold waters. In the practical domains HEI deans struggle to pursue this aim, due to the lack of clear goals, and unknown barriers and strengths (GUNi, 2019). Currently, HEI SD initiatives hinge on curricula development and student initiatives (Mula 2017). However, a lively enacting of SD in HEI is scarce and demands a transformation starting from individual mind-sets towards SD, fostering departmental change. DECODE Sustainability pillars are entrepreneurship and engagement as the vehicle to enable such change as it empowers staff to create public value, as prioritised by the Renewed EU Agenda for Higher Education (EC 2017).

The principal aim of the DECODE Sustainability project is creating departmental governance changes that are effective and efficient in the creation of sustainability impact. For this purpose, the project will:
1) Facilitate the identification and understanding of key challenges and opportunities in integrating SD into HEI departments
2) Create a vibrant “sustainability community” of deans and their representatives
3) Dissect the complex task of departmental SD integration into smaller pieces (process steps, tools)
4) Foster deans’ abilities to integrate SD as a corner stone of their academic unit
5) Create a clear path and decisions to increase departmental contributions to SD

Project approach and outputs
The DECODE Sustainability project will (1) establish a baseline report to ascertain SD needs in HEI, (2) design innovative tools and training program to upskill deans and representatives in SD through entrepreneurial and engaged thinking and acting, (3) facilitate communication and share of experiences of deans and representatives towards enhancing SD impacts in their departments, and (4) provide a tool-based process to roadmap future action towards SD impact.
The project includes five intellectual outputs:
IO1 – DECODE HEI Sustainability Analysis: a mapping of the status of the integration of SD within academic units at HEIs
IO2 – DECODE Deans Council and Platform: an implementation framework for the Council creation, and a web-based platform (DECODE Connect) for interaction, collaboration and peer-learning
IO3 – DECODE Toolkit: a collection of instruments and best practices supporting systemic change in university departments
IO4 – DECODE Impact Pathways and Impact Roadmaps Framework: a framework for generic Impact Pathways to advance departmental contributions to sustainability, and a framework for the creation of department-specific Impact Roadmaps (based on generic Pathways) which will outline the guide actions to promote positive change
IO5 – DECODE Empowerment Program for Impact Roadmap Design: a training program aimed at equipping deans and their representatives for sustainability with the right knowledge, skills and tools to design a department-specific Impact Roadmap

The outputs will
(1) decode the complex task of SD integration in academia into a comprehensible and manageable tool-supported process
(2) contribute to positioning SD at a tactical level and equip deans and their representatives with the right knowledge, skills and peer-learning mechanisms
(3) create substantial advancements in SD integration in departments through a holistic framework that is comprehensive in scope whilst easy to implement in practice

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 349745 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II & Country: IT

Project Partners

• ASSOCIACIO CATALANA D’UNIVERSITATS PUBLIQUES
• ACEEU GmbH
• RIGAS TEHNISKA UNIVERSITATE
• UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE