The building you live in, the street it is on, the neighborhood you are part of and the city or country it is in, each present unique sustainability challenges for the future. Yet these places are inter-connected locally and globally.

The inter-university sustainability challenge is a challenge-based learning course in which you work on the solution to a sustainability challenge with a multi-disciplinary team from a local and global perspective. You will work in a team with teachers, students and stakeholders from the alliance between Utrecht University, TU/e and Wageningen University & Research and connect with the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. In this inter-cultural setting, we challenge you to create innovative, creative, scientifically-sound solutions for our living environments.

Students from all disciplines are welcome.

The overall course topic is ‘Places where we live: A future of 1.5 degrees’. Students will form multidisciplinary groups to work on the course topic and a related challenge defined with a societal partner. After the student team formation, students will get to know each other’s disciplinary backgrounds, interview experts in the field, define their interdisciplinary project focus and distribute the work. The final result will be a visualization of their sustainable challenge solution, which will be presented in the form of a physical or digital design, substantiated by a written group report and presented to stakeholders and a core team of experts.

Practical information

• Start on 21st April 2025
• End on 21st June 2025
• For 2nd and 3rd year BA students
• Live events:
  On Friday, 25th of April and on Friday 20th of June, there will be deviations from the normal schedule due to onsite visits. Please consider this when choosing this project and plan accordingly with other courses or activities, as availability for the entire day will be required for these specific weeks.
• Study load varies per institution between 5 and 7.5 EC, you can see the study credits when you register for the specific course as explained in registration.
  TU/e 5 EC
  WUR 6 EC
  UU 7,5 EC
• Language: English

Teaching method

The students will meet the lecturers and fellow students using innovative synchronous online learning tools, like the Virtual Classroom. The purpose of the inter-university collaboration is to meet people from other cultures and academic backgrounds and to benefit from the expertise and perspectives those other people offer. At the same time, this collaboration will help reveal to the students which knowledge, expertise, skills, perspectives and cultural aspects they adopt to approach the project themselves.
The students take responsibility for the project. This means they come up with their own ideas, and show a positive attitude towards inter-/transdisciplinary collaboration. All student teams will present their visualization and sustainable solution to their peers, teachers, coaches and the societal partner.

Registration

The registration (deadline) is dependent on your home institute.

TU/e
November 15th, 2024 until January 5th, 2025
Students can register via Osiris using the main course code (4CBLW00) and then select up to five project preferences via a digital form on MS Form (provided upon registration).
Please note that this challenge is embedded as one of the many challenges within an existing course (4CBLW00). For questions about registration contact Lianne de Jong

UU
From the 27th of January 2025 until the 7th of February 2025
Late registration from the 31st of March 2025 until 1st of April 2025
Students can register with Osiris