A Changing World – students can learn about sustainability

Petter Terenius, lecturer at the Department of Informatics and Media, is coordinating the work with the training course, which has been designed for all disciplinary domains and students in all study programmes. The general starting point is that under the Higher Education Act, universities are required to promote sustainable development.

“It’s important because it’s in the law, but you can also look at it the opposite way. It’s in the law because it’s important. And when it comes to rankings, it’s precisely this kind of initiative that lifts us higher up. It has great PR value for the University. The University’s sustainability work is not especially visible today, and this is a way to actually showcase it externally. This is a really exciting sustainability initiative.”

The three parts of the training course in modules

The training course consists of three main parts: a basic open module, a module related to the specific degree programme a particular student is studying, and a more theme-based module that is open to students from all departments.

Petter Terenius explains that the basic module deals with fundamental sustainability, planetary boundaries, conflicts of objectives, etc., and will consist of twelve half-hour long, recorded lectures that the students can access online.

“This training course is unique. There are of course other Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) about the UN’s sustainable development goals for example, but the idea here is that the teachers connect it to their own research. They can present a specific theme and then discuss how their own research relates to it,” says Petter.

The aim of the training course is also to solve a problem for the departments.

“Currently, many students are not taking these perspectives with them into the workplace,” says Petter Terenius. “The goal is to graduate students who make conscious and evidence-based choices, but who also understand that questions about climate change, consumption, nature and people’s living conditions don’t always have obvious answers.

“Many people start out in a key position when they begin their professional lives and we want them to think sustainability when making their decisions. The hope is that in their professional lives our students will be able to create a better world,” he says.

From local project to University-wide

The project was originally initiated by Sebastian Sobek, Professor of Limnology at the Department of Ecology and Genetics. It started with a desire to try to integrate sustainability issues into the Bachelor’s degree programmes in engineering and science, says Petter Terenius.

“But limiting the project to one disciplinary domain is no use, because these issues are multidisciplinary. So we thought we might as well expand it and try to reach all the students at the University. Sustainability issues are of course typical of those that span many domains, and are also very rewarding to discuss with students.”

The intention is that all students in University Bachelor's study programmes will have the opportunity to complete this training course in sustainable development from the 2025–2026 academic year.

“We are currently recording the lectures in Studio Blåsenhus, so we can test-drive them in a study programme during the winter. Hopefully we can then roll out the training course to many study programmes.”

An interesting challenge

“Of the eleven teachers who have so far said yes to participating, six are professors, four are docents and one is a senior lecturer. But there is no shortage of researchers who are researching sustainability issues. The problem is just who has time to participate and also who is most relevant for the course,” says Petter Terenius.

“The important thing is that you have a research project that is relevant in the context and maybe too that you can engage well with an audience on video. During the summer I’ve put together an exciting team of teachers. An interesting challenge, because there is no formal list of ‘sustainability people’ at the University,” he says.

Petter Terenius has also met with sustainability managers at the universities of Coimbra, Lancaster and Oxford and listened to their perspectives and their reflections on what potential future collaborations in the area might look like.

“It will be fun to bring this all to fruition. It would also be fun if we could make it the starting shot for something else. We’ll just have to see where it all lands,” he concludes.

Johan Ahlenius