First TransRegINT fellowship successfully completed

According to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) aims to qualify people to think and act in a sustainable way. Prof Dr Ulrich Holzbaur is an expert in the field of ESD. He is a Fellow at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences (HSRW) this winter semester.

From the Ostalb to the Lower Rhine – Fellow contributes to many joint activities and discussions

‘The two face-to-face weeks in October 2024 and this January, supplemented by video conferences and telephone calls, were the core of the fellowship,’ says Prof Dr Ulrich Holzbaur. In Dr Vanessa Meinen’s ‘Sustainable Event Management’ course, he digitally participated in interim presentations by the students and held an online lecture on the topic of sustainable state garden shows. On the occasion of his visit now, the students presented their ideas on sustainable event organisation for the 2029 State Garden Show in Kleve to him and representatives of the city of Kleve and WTM (Wirtschaft, Tourismus & Marketing Stadt Kleve GmbH).

Together with Prof Dr Daniela Lud from the Faculty of Communication and Environment, Prof Dr Ulrich Holzbaur led the course ‘Sustainable Architecture and Redevelopment’ at the Kamp-Lintfort campus. In the Faculty of Society and Economics, he and Prof. Dr Wögen Tadsen took on the roles of so-called business angels in the ‘Marketing and Buyer Behaviour’ course and had the students present a sustainable marketing concept for a fictitious or real company in the form of a poster.

For Prof Dr Ulrich Holzbaur, the teaching tandems were the backbone of the fellowship, as they allowed an intensive exchange with colleagues at HSRW: ‘Both in Kleve and in Kamp-Lintfort, there was also a professional exchange that will certainly continue.’

‘Peer2Peer: HSRW teaching café’ addresses ESD

How is ESD implemented and taught at the HSRW? That’s a fascinating question, for one thing is certain: according to the BMBF, education for sustainable development not only serves to address sustainability issues such as climate protection and biodiversity, but also to help learners understand the impact of their own actions on the world and make responsible, sustainable decisions.

The internal university exchange format of the ZfQ (Centre for Quality Improvement in Studies & Teaching) ‘Peer2Peer: HSRW Teaching Café’ by lecturers for lecturers invited lecturers to a special format on the occasion of Prof. Dr Ulrich Holzbaur’s Fellow Week.  At the ‘Peer 2 Peer: Teaching Café XL – Sustainability in Teaching’, which was jointly organised by the ZfQ and our Competence Building team, a total of six lecturers from the four faculties shared their experiences from individual degree programmes or courses.

The speakers were Prof Dr Ute Hansen from the Faculty of Communication and Environment, Prof Dr Dipl.-Wirt. Roland Schmetz from the Faculty of Technology and Bionics, Prof. Dr Florian Wichern and Prof. Dr Matthias Kleinke from the Faculty of Life Sciences, Prof. Dr Wögen Tadsen from the Faculty of Society and Economics and our Fellow Prof. Dr Ulrich Holzbaur.

Various aspects of ESD in teaching were discussed, some of them lively, with illustrative examples and proven methods:

• ‘Educating students is the most effective contribution to sustainable transformation, because the students are the ones who will act in the future.’
• ‘Teaching should not contradict itself’ was the message with regard to the implementation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which is sometimes perceived as contradictory.
• Students should be encouraged to think beyond supposed facts and limits. In addition to teaching various methods of sustainability analysis, this also requires the development of skills and competences, both professional and personal.

Dr Vanessa Meinen, Coordinator of our Capacity Building team and responsible for the fellowship programme, is pleased with the response to the ‘Peer 2 Peer: Teaching Café XL – Sustainability in Teaching’. ‘I am delighted that we were able to look at the topic of ESD from different cross-faculty perspectives together with Rolf Kerkhoff and Carmen Lewa from the ZfQ.’

The workshops on sustainable universities and transformation were also fruitful for Fellow Prof Dr Ulrich Holzbaur. He sums up the fellowship at the HSRW as follows:

‘I would recommend a fellowship to anyone working in academia for whom sustainability is a worthwhile goal, for which you are happy to move out of your physical comfort zone and into a professional one.’