2. Education for a more sustainable world
Focus on sustainability issues in all study programmes
A major step towards helping students develop into critical and engaged scholars is the inclusion of sustainability issues in all study programmes at Radboud University. From 2022 onwards, every student who graduates from our institution will have been exposed to sustainability issues during their studies. This will be done by creating links to sustainability within existing courses and by adding separate modules on this theme. At present, 56% of all study programmes include modules that focus on sustainability issues.
In 2021, an inventory was made together with the faculties of the attention paid to sustainability in the current study programmes. Various workshops with students and lecturers identified where attention could be enhanced within the programmes. In addition, the university developed Bachelor’s courses that are open to all students and focus on sustainability. These include the Sustainable Development Goals course and the new interdisciplinary Climate Crisis course.
Radboud Honours Academy also paid renewed attention to the topic in various projects, such as research on the vegan campus or in the Honours Lab on creating place-based, sustainable social impact: RE:PLACE – Transforming urban ecosystems. The Radboud Academy also devoted attention to sustainability in a programme for young professionals.
In 2021, the first sustainability testimony was awarded: a note on the diploma supplement of a student who devoted their thesis to the intersection of natural sciences and public administration. Other study programmes and faculties will give this testimony to students who devote at least 21 study credits to this theme and focus their thesis on it. See this link for more information about sustainability in education.
